Reports From The Hive, Where The Swarm Concurs

The author, on Appledore Island, watching a swarm launch into flight from the vertical board that he uses as a swarm mount. The two feeder bottles on the mount provide sugar syrup to keep the swarm well fed. From the book “Honeybee Democracy” by Thomas D. Seeley

From The New York Times:

What can we learn from the bees? Honeybees practice a kind of consensus democracy similar to what happens at a New England town meeting, says Thomas D. Seeley, author of “Honeybee Democracy.” A group comes to a decision through a consideration of options and a process of elimination.

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Ray Kurzweil’s Blio E-Book Launch Met With Confusion, Controversy

From Gadget Lab:

This week, K-NFB, an e-reading company founded by Ray Kurzweil and the National Federation for the Blind, launched its much-anticipated Blio reading app and e-book store. Blio was immediately and widely panned by publishers, developers and readers.

“Many of the failures are fundamentally at odds with the one thing that Kurzweil was touting above all else: accessibility,” wrote Laura Dawson, a digital reading industry consultant, formerly of BarnesAndNoble.com. K-NFB initially promised to make e-books more accessible to blind readers; yet Windows, currently its only enhanced books platform, has known text-to-speech conversion issues.

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Scribd Facebook Instant Personalization Is A Privacy Nightmare

From Epicenter:

Online document sharing site Scribd hooked up with Facebook to create “instant personalization” so Scribd users can get reading recommendations based on their Facebook likes and what their friends are sharing. Sounds interesting, right?

But the document sharing and embedding service has created a privacy nightmare that involves drafting users who are already logged into Facebook without offering a clear opt out process either on the site or through e-mail.

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How To Cyber Attack A Nuclear Plant

Photo: Going nuclear: The Stuxnet computer worm may have designed to infiltrate an Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz, 180 miles south of Tehran. Credit: Getty Images

A Way To Attack Nuclear Plants -- Technology Review

Industrial computer systems are typically far less secure than they should be, experts say.

For the last few months, a sophisticated computer worm has wriggled its way between some of the most critical control systems in the world.

The timing of the worm's release, combined with several clues buried in its code, has led some experts to speculate that the worm, dubbed Stuxnet, was originally designed to sabotage an Iranian nuclear facility, possibly the enrichment plant in Natanz, roughly 180 miles south of Tehran. This week, officials in Iran confirmed that Stuxnet had been found on systems inside the plant, although they denied that it had caused any harm.

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The Supernova's Secrets Cracked At Last?

Hank Childs / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

From Time Magazine:

Most stars end their lives in a whimper — our own sun will almost certainly be one of them — but the most massive stars go out with an impressive bang. When that happens, creating what's known as a Type II supernova, the associated blast of energy is so brilliant that it can briefly outshine an entire galaxy, give birth to ultra-dense neutron stars or black holes, and forge atoms so heavy that even the Big Bang wasn't powerful enough to create them. If supernovas didn't exist, neither would gold, silver, platinum or uranium. The last time a supernova went off close enough to earth to be visible without a telescope, back in 1987, it made the cover of TIME.

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Budget Deal Propels NASA On New Path

From Wall Street Journal:

House's Passage of $58 Billion Compromise Bill Funds Commercial Space Travel, More Robotic Deep-Space Missions.

In unusual bipartisan fashion, the House on Wednesday approved a three-year $58-billion compromise bill intended to revive NASA's manned-exploration programs while funding plans for pioneering private rockets able to blast astronauts into orbit.

Capping nearly a year of intense industry turmoil, agency uncertainty and congressional debate, the vote reflected last-minute decisions by House leaders from both parties to embrace a previously-passed Senate blueprint for NASA, though it doesn't completely satisfy any of the rival interest groups or regional factions maneuvering to shape the agency's future.

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Google Launches Latin Translation Tool

Google has added Latin to its list of languages on Google Translate

From The Telegraph:

Google Translate, a service that can instantly translate entire web pages or chunks of text in to another language, has added Latin to its list.

Google Translate supports more than 50 languages, including minority languages such as Welsh and Haitian Creole, and the addition of Latin is sure to please scholars and traditionalists.

In a blog post, written entirely in Latin, Jakob Uszkoreit, a senior engineer at Google, said that Latin was far from a “dead language”.

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Heard For The First Time In 2,000 years: Scientists Post Readings Of Ancient Babylonian Poems Online

A clay tablet known as the Jursa tablet that proves the existence of a Babylonian official in the Bible

From The Daily Mail:

The ancient language of Babylonian can be heard for the first time in almost 2,000 years after Cambridge University scholars posted readings and poems online.

Babylonian, one of the chief languages of Ancient Mesopotamia, dates back as far as the second millennium BC but died out around 2,000 years ago.

However, Cambridge historians have resurrected the ancient tongue by discovering how the language was pronounced and spoken.

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Rivers Threatened Around The World

From New Scientist:

The water supplying 80 per cent of the world's population is exposed to "high levels of threat". That's the conclusion of a study that surveys the status of rivers throughout the world, and looks at their effects on both humans and the ecosystem at large.

Writing in this week's Nature (vol 467, p 555), Charles Vorosmarty of the City College of New York and colleagues pull together a swathe of data on factors affecting water security, from dams that reduce river flow to the pollution and destruction of wetlands.

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'Giant' Step Toward Explaining Differences In Height Among People

Scientists have identified hundreds of genetic variants that together account for about 10 percent of the inherited variation of height among people. (Credit: iStockphoto/Stefanie Timmermann)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 29, 2010) — An international collaboration of more than 200 institutions, led by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston, the Broad Institute, and a half-dozen other institutions in Europe and North America, has identified hundreds of genetic variants that together account for about 10 percent of the inherited variation of height among people.

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Are UFOs Disarming Nuclear Weapons, And If So Why?

Did UFOs Disarm Nuclear Weapons? And If So, Why? -- Live Science

At an unusual press conference recently held in Washington, D.C., a UFO author and a half-dozen or so former U.S. military airmen asserted that "The U.S. Air Force is lying about the national security implications of unidentified aerial objects at nuclear bases and we can prove it." They claim that since 1948, extraterrestrials in spaceships have not only been visiting Earth but hovering over British and American nuclear missile sites and temporarily deactivating the weapons.

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My Comment: I am skeptical .... but these guys are former senior U.S. military airmen, and they should be listened to. Unfortunately .... they have no visible proof.

Lost Language Unearthed In Letter

Photo: A letter discovered in northern Peru in 2008 showing a column of numbers written in Spanish and translated into a language that scholars say is now extinct, is seen in this undated photo released by archaeologists September 22, 2010. (HANDOUT)

From CNews:

LIMA - Archaeologists say scrawl on the back of a letter recovered from a 17th century dig site reveals a previously unknown language spoken by indigenous peoples in northern Peru.

A team of international archaeologists found the letter under a pile of adobe bricks in a collapsed church complex near Trujillo, 347 miles (560 km) north of Lima. The complex had been inhabited by Dominican friars for two centuries.

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Glacier Found To Be Deeply Cracked

While drilling holes in Alaska’s Bench Glacier, scientists discovered dozens of massive cracks that extend from the ground far up into the ice. The movement of water through these cracks could affect glacier movement and melting. Joel Harper

From Science News:

Pressure and stress can lead to a crack-up, or several, if you are a glacier. Researchers have discovered a system of deep cracks extending from the ground up into the overlying ice of southern Alaska’s Bench Glacier. The crevasses are described in the Sept. 30 Nature.

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Stonehenge Boy 'Was From The Med'

The boy was buried with around 90 amber beads

From The BBC:

Chemical tests on teeth from an ancient burial near Stonehenge indicate that the person in the grave grew up around the Mediterranean Sea.

The bones belong to a teenager who died 3,550 years ago and was buried with a distinctive amber necklace.

The conclusions come from analysis of different forms of the elements oxygen and strontium in his tooth enamel.

Analysis on a previous skeleton found near Stonehenge showed that that person was also a migrant to the area.

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Google Celebrates Birthday With Cake

Google turned 12 today. And the media giant celebrated with a pixelated birthday cake. Google.com

From Christian Science Monitor:

Twelve years ago, Larry Page and Sergey Brin registered the domain for Google.com, a site which they hoped would revolutionize the very way information is organized on the Web. It's fair to say they succeeded. And today, Google, a multi-billion dollar company based in Mountain View, Calif., is celebrating its 12th birthday with a big, digitized birthday cake logo, courtesy of the American painter Wayne Thiebaud.

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Revealed: The Secret World Of The Panda

Giant Pandas eating bamboo in Sichuan Province, China Photo: ALAMY

From The Telegraph:

New research has revealed that, contrary to popular beliefs, pandas are surprisingly well-equipped for survival.

The giant panda is one of the best-known symbols in the world, used to sell everything from electronic goods to fizzy drinks, chocolate to biscuits, liquorice to cigarettes – not to mention global conservation. Yet thanks to its shy and retiring nature, it has long been one of the planet’s most mysterious creatures. Why, for example, do pandas eat bamboo? Why do they appear to have such difficulty breeding? And how on earth has such a seemingly maladjusted species managed to survive for so long?

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Does ET Live On Goldilocks Planet?

From The Daily Mail:

An astronomer picked up a mysterious pulse of light coming from the direction of the newly discovered Earth-like planet almost two years ago, it has emerged.

Dr Ragbir Bhathal, a scientist at the University of Western Sydney, picked up the odd signal in December 2008, long before it was announced that the star Gliese 581 has habitable planets in orbit around it.

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We, Robot: What Real-Life Machines Can And Can’t Do

Photo: A lot of us teach ourselves how to reason, how to think, how to analyze new information....This has been very difficult for robots to be able to do.

From Science News:

As director of the Maryland Robotics Center, Satyandra Gupta oversees 25 faculty members working on all things robotic: snake-inspired robots, robotic swarms, minirobots for medicine and robots for exploring extreme environments on land, under the sea and in outer space. In September the Center hosted its first Robotics Day; afterward, Gupta talked robots with Science News writer Rachel Ehrenberg.

How do robots influence our lives today?

There are certain scenarios, such as manufacturing — making cars, making airplanes — where people are replacing human labor with robotic devices and the rationale is usually that it is less expensive, quality is consistent, that kind of thing. Then there are certain applications where very few humans can do the task because the skills required are so high…. Surgery would be an example. Let’s imagine that there’s a very hard-to-perform surgery that very few humans can do. Now if a robot can be trained or even teleoperated by these surgeons, then you would be able to get that performance from that robot.

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Fossil Secrets Of The Da Vinci Codex

Da Vinci realised people were wrong about the origin of Italy's fossils
(Image: Ted Spiegel/Corbis)

From New Scientist:

Did Leonardo decipher traces of ancient life centuries before Darwin?

It was to be Leonardo da Vinci's most impressive work yet. In 1483, the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, commissioned the up-and-coming artist to create a huge bronze statue of a horse, standing over 7 metres tall. Da Vinci spent the next 10 years perfecting a full-size clay model. Sadly, it was never cast in bronze. Tonnes of the metal were needed, and Sforza ended up using the earmarked supplies to make weapons for use against invading French troops. When the French army took Milan in 1499, its archers used da Vinci's clay horse for target practice.

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Paper-Thin Screens With A Twist

From The Wall Street Journal:

Lots of researchers have been trying to come up with a way to make flexible displays that work like computer screens but with a literal twist—they can be bent, rolled and folded like a sheet of paper.

The Taiwan-based Industrial Technology Research Institute, or ITRI, won the top prize in this year's Innovation Awards contest for a manufacturing technique that promises to clear the way for commercial development of high-quality displays on flexible materials.

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Making Music On A Microscopic Scale

Image of the chip containing six mass-spring systems (i.e. six tones). (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Twente)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 29, 2010) — Strings a fraction of the thickness of a human hair, with microscopic weights to pluck them: Researchers and students from the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology of the University of Twente in The Netherlands have succeeded in constructing the first musical instrument with dimensions measured in mere micrometres -- a 'micronium' -- that produces audible tones. A composition has been specially written for the instrument.

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Sloppy Records Cast Galileo's Trial In New Light

An 1857 painting titled "Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition" shows the astronomer standing trial before the Roman Catholic Church inquisitors. Credit: Cristiano Banti (1824–1904)

From Live Science:

When it comes to bad record-keepers, no one expects the Roman Inquisition — but that's exactly what one historian discovered while trying to resolve a centuries-old controversy over the trials of Galileo.

The Roman Catholic Church's second trial of the famed Italian astronomer has come to symbolize a pivotal culture clash between science and religion. But a broad examination of 50 years’ worth of records suggests the Roman Inquisition viewed the case more as an ordinary legal dispute than a world-changing philosophical conflict.

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Did Australian Aborigines Reach America First?

The skull of Luzia, possibly the oldest skeleton in the Americas, who has facial features distinctive of Australian Aborigines. Credit: Marco Fernandes/COSMOS

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Cranial features distinctive to Australian Aborigines are present in hundreds of skulls that have been uncovered in Central and South America, some dating back to over 11,000 years ago.

Evolutionary biologist Walter Neves of the University of São Paulo, whose findings are reported in a cover story in the latest issue of Cosmos magazine, has examined these skeletons and recovered others, and argues that there is now a mass of evidence indicating that at least two different populations colonised the Americas.

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Stonehenge An Ancient Tourist Destination?

Photo: Revellers watch the sunrise at Stonehenge on the day of the summer solstice in Wiltshire in southern England. New research suggests that people may have come from all over to visit the mysterious stone monoliths. (REUTERS FILES/Stephen Hird)

From CNEWS:

Stonehenge wasn't just a gathering place for locals. New research suggests that people may have come from all over Europe and the Mediterranean to visit the mysterious stone monoliths.

British scientists analyzed the teeth of people buried near Stonehenge and found that some of them had travelled great distances to arrive in southern England.

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Distant World Could Support Life

ANOTHER WORLDGliese 581 (upper left in this artist’s depiction) has six confirmed planets, including one (foreground) that orbits the star at a distance hospitable to life. Lynette Cook

From Science News:

Scientists have spotted an Earth doppelgänger that may have the right specs to harbor life, in the Libra constellation just 20 light-years distant.

Although details about conditions on the planet’s surface remain a mystery, the find suggests that many more potentially habitable planets are likely to be found. The discovery is reported online September 29 at arXiv.org and will be described in an upcoming Astrophysical Journal.

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Water Map Shows Billions At Risk Of 'Water Insecurity'

From The BBC:

About 80% of the world's population lives in areas where the fresh water supply is not secure, according to a new global analysis.

Researchers compiled a composite index of "water threats" that includes issues such as scarcity and pollution.

The most severe threat category encompasses 3.4 billion people.

Writing in the journal Nature, they say that in western countries, conserving water for people through reservoirs and dams works for people, but not nature.

They urge developing countries not to follow the same path.

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Kno Tablet Touted As Next-Gen Textbook

The Kno tablet computer. Kno

From Christian Science Monitor:

Kno, a start-up electronics firm based in Santa Clara, Calif., will soon introduce a single-screen tablet computer intended for use by students across the country. The Kno – yes, it's both the name of the device and its maker – is expected to ship with a 14.1-inch screen and video functionality. (For comparison, the iPad sports a 9.7-inch screen.) The tablet computer will be controlled via a touchscreen and a plastic stylus.

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12 Events That Will Change Everything, Made Interactive

From Scientific American:

In addition to reacting to news as it breaks, we work to anticipate what will happen. Here we contemplate 12 possibilities and rate their likelihood of happening by 2050

The best science transforms our conception of the universe and our place in it and helps us to understand and cope with changes beyond our control. Relativity, natural selection, germ theory, heliocentrism and other explanations of natural phenomena have remade our intellectual and cultural landscapes. The same holds true for inventions as diverse as the Internet, formal logic, agriculture and the wheel.

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My Comment: The web interactive page for each of the 12 events is here.

Darpa Is Looking At Young Minds For New Ideas

FIRST Robotics Competition Taking a cue from the FIRST Robotics Competition, DARPA is offering prize-based challenges to inspire high school students to design new robots. FIRST

Seeking New Defense Robots, Darpa Gives Fabrication Technology To High Schoolers -- Popular Science

Taking a page from advertising strategy, DARPA is hoping to get ‘em while they’re young. The military’s mad-science wing wants various organizations to put manufacturing equipment in 1,000 high schools around the world, part of a new program called “MENTOR” — Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach. The partnership will include new prize-based challenges to inspire a new generation of defense manufacturers.

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Report: Facebook, Skype Planning Deep Integration

This screenshot uses real pictures with fake names and numbers to illustrate a Skype-Facebook integration.

From CNET:

You didn't think Facebook would integrate with Google Voice, did you?

Actually, according to sources close to the situation, Facebook and Skype are poised to announce a significant and wide-ranging partnership that will include integration of SMS, voice chat, and Facebook Connect.

The move by the pair--which have tested small contact importer integrations before--is a natural one for the social-networking giant, which is aiming to be the central communications and messaging platform for its users, across a range of media.

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Better Surgery With New Surgical Robot With Force Feedback

Surgical robot Sofie. (Credit: Bart van Overbeeke)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2010) — Robotic surgery makes it possible to perform highly complicated and precise operations. Surgical robots have limitations, too. For one, the surgeon does not 'feel' the force of his incision or of his pull on the suture, and robots are also big and clumsy to use. Therefore TU/e researcher Linda van den Bedem developed a much more compact surgical robot, which uses 'force feedback' to allow the surgeon to feel what he or she is doing.

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Kelp Waits To Take Its Place In America's Stomachs

Alaria, a type of brown kelp, dries on a raft. The Maine company Ocean Approved will cut this seaweed up to sell for salads. Credit: Ocean Approved, LLC.

From Live Science:

The leaves resemble brown lasagna noodles when they wash ashore on coasts around the world. Like many other seaweeds, sugar kelp has all sorts of uses. The leaves of Saccharina latissima provide a sweetener, mannitol, as well as thickening and gelling agents that are added to food, textiles and cosmetics.

But some believe its most important potential is largely untapped: as an addition to the American diet.

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'The Flintstones' Rocks On At 50

The series chronicled popular culture and spotlighted icons of the day -- not of 10,000 B.C. but of the 1960s. Flickr

From Discovery News:

Fifty years ago, Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty debuted before American television audiences.

A half century ago, Fred and Wilma Flintstone and neighbors Barney and Betty Rubble put the mythical town of Bedrock on the map when "The Flintstones" cartoon aired on television for the first time.

The show, which parodied suburban life, was the longest running U.S. animated sitcom to be aired during peak viewing hours on television until another cartoon family, the Simpsons, claimed the record in 1997.

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Religion And Health: Is There A Link?

From ABC News:

Just Changing Churches May Be Harmful to Your Health, Study Claims.

Many scientific studies in recent years have sought to prove a link between religion and health, and they usually ended up contending that faith may be very good medicine. But new research attempts to look at the opposite side of that coin: What happens when a person loses faith, or even switches from one religious group to another?

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Decision Needed On European Space Truck Upgrade

ARV would have a conical re-entry capsule and a more capable service module

From The BBC:

European countries will soon be asked if they wish to press on with design work to upgrade the ATV space truck.

The robotic craft takes supplies to the International Space station (ISS), but could be enhanced to return cargo to Earth and even carry a human crew.

Further feasibility work will cost some 150m euros, and nations are likely to decide by the end of the year whether to continue or shelve the project.

Much may depend on how they view future plans for human space exploration.

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Glonass To Provide Global GPS Coverage This Year - Top Official

Russia's navigation system Glonass. © RIA Novosti. Maksim Bogodvid

From RIA Novosti:

Russia's top space official confirmed on Monday Russia's navigation system Glonass will cover 100% of the Earth's surface by the end of the year.

"This year, I think, we will provide 100% coverage of the globe with the Glonass navigation system," the head of the federal space agency Roscosmos, Anatoly Perminov, said.

"We will have 24 [operational] satellites in orbit and 3-4 spacecraft in the required orbital reserve," he added.

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Ancient "Fossil" Virus Shows Infection To Be Millions Of Years Old

INFECTIOUS INSERTIONS: Today's songbirds are harboring traces of ancient viral strains in their genomes, giving researchers a new understanding of the disease's age and evolutionary history. Image: ISTOCKPHOTO/GLOBAL IP

From Scientific American:

Genetic traces of an ancient hepatitis B-like virus confounds common knowledge about viral evolution.

Viruses can be thought of as hyperspeed shape-shifters, organisms that can adapt quickly to overcome barriers to infection. But recent research has been finding ancient traces of many viruses in animal genomes, DNA insertions that have likely been there for much longer than the viruses were previously thought to have existed at all.

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Freshly Discovered Earth-Like Planet Orbiting Nearby Star Could Be The First Truly Habitable Exoplanet

Gliese 581 Digital Sky Survey/ESO

From Popular Science:

A couple of math geeks recently calculated that the discovery of the first “habitable” exoplanet would be announced in May of next year -- but a few stargazers from UC Santa Cruz and their colleagues simply couldn’t wait that long. In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, the astronomers report the discovery of what may be the first truly habitable earth-like exoplanet orbiting the nearby red dwarf star Gliese 581.

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The Difference Engine: Bigger Than Wi-Fi

From The Economist:

HAVE you ever wondered, if you are of an age with your correspondent, about those missing channels on old television sets? Apart from channel two, the rest of the original VHF channels on the dial were usually just the odd numbers from three to 13. That was because, in over-the-air VHF broadcasting, the channel between two analogue stations had to be left unused so that it would not interfere with adjacent ones. When UHF broadcasting came along, empty “guard bands” were added to each channel for the same reason. In some places, this so-called “white space” of unused frequencies separating working channels amounted to as much as 70% of the total bandwidth available for television broadcasting.

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The Carbon Age: Dark Element, Brighter Future

Image: A computer-rendered view inside a carbon nanotube. (Credit: ghutchis/Flickr)

From CNET:

Humankind has seen the Stone Age, the Golden Age, and the Iron Age. Some would argue the 20th century should be called the Silicon Age. Based on the events of its first 10 years, the 21st century may very well become known as the Carbon Age.

An important tension is unfolding between two types of carbon--atmospheric carbon in the form of carbon dioxide emissions, and elemental carbon as a building block for a new generation of devices designed to manage and abate those same pollutants.

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Mars Moon Phobos Likely Forged By Catastrophic Blast

From Space.com:

One of the two moons of Mars most likely formed from rubble catapulted into space after a comet or meteorite slammed into the Red Planet, a new study finds.

The moon, Phobos, looks a lot like an asteroid: It's lumpy, potato-shaped and very small. It has an average radius of just 11 kilometers (6.8 miles).

Scientists have long wondered about the origin of Phobos — is it merely a captured asteroid, the leftovers from Mars' formation or evidence of a cosmic Martian hit-and-run with another object?

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Sneaking Spies Into A Cell's Nucleus

Tuan Vo-Dinh, left, and Molly Gregas are researchers at Duke University. (Credit: Duke University Photography)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2010) — Duke University bioengineers have not only figured out a way to sneak molecular spies through the walls of individual cells, they can now slip them into the command center -- or nucleus -- of those cells, where they can report back important information or drop off payloads.

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Mysterious, Rare Red Diamond On Display

The Kazanjian Red Diamond, one of only three red diamonds of more than five carats, is on display at the American Museum of Natural History. Credit: AMNH/D. Finnin.

From Live Science:

NEW YORK — Among colored diamonds, red is particularly rare, and mysterious, since no one knows for certain the origin of the color within the stone.

One of the three known red diamonds weighing more than 5 carats (1 gram), an emerald-cut stone about the size of a small fingertip rests against a gray background in an American Museum of Natural History display case. This stone, known as the Kazanjian Red Diamond, has a dark hue resembling that of a garnet or a ruby, and in its nearly century-long history, it has been mistaken for the latter.

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Quantum Leap Towards Computer Of The Future

An artist's impression of a phosphorus atom (a red sphere surrounded by a blue electron cloud) coupled to a silicon single-electron transistor (College of Fine Arts, The University of New South Wales: William Algar-Chuklin)

From ABC News (Australia):

An Australian-led team of scientists have taken a big step forward in the race to develop a quantum computer.

Quantum computing relies on harnessing the laws of quantum physics - laws that apply to particles smaller than an atom - to get a computer to carry out many calculations at the same time.

Read more ....

Solar Or Wind Power? Why Not Both?

Solar wind doesn't act like wind on Earth, and the satellite wouldn't generate electricity like a windmill. iStockphoto

From Discovery News:

A massive satellite that harvests the power in solar wind could meet the energy needs of all humanity and then some.

Solar and wind power have long been two of the main contenders in the race to find the next big renewable energy resource. Rather than choosing between the two, scientists at Washington State University have instead combined them.

Read more ....

Kindle For The Web

One-Fifth Of World's Plants At Risk Of Extinction

Photo: Plants such as artemisia sweet wormwood provide valuable drugs - in this case, for malaria

From The BBC:

One-fifth of the world's plants - the foundation of life on Earth - are at risk of extinction, a study concludes.

Researchers have sampled almost 4,000 species, and conclude that 22% should be classified as "threatened" - the same alarming rate as for mammals.

A further 33% of species were too poorly understood to be assessed.

The analysis comes from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the Natural History Museum and International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Read more ....

The End of Time Is Nigh (In A Cosmic Sense, Anyhow)

The End of Time Ticking off the seconds until the end of time, some 3.7 billion years from now. Leo Reynolds via Flickr

From Popular Science:

The universe has only about 3.7 billion years in which to settle its affairs. At least, that’s the new assertion from a group of physicists who say that there is a 50 percent chance that time will end within that time frame. If the laws of physics as we understand them are in fact correct, then time must eventually end – and their math shows that both the sun and the Earth should still be around when that happens.

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Deceptive Robots Hint At Machine Self-Awareness

From New Scientist:

A robot that tricks its opponent in a game of hide and seek is a step towards machines that can intuit our thoughts, intentions and feelings

ROVIO the robotic car is creating a decoy. It trundles forward and knocks over a marker pen stood on its end. The pen is positioned along the path to a hiding place - but Rovio doesn't hide there. It sneaks away and conceals itself elsewhere.

When a second Rovio arrives, it sees the felled pen and assumes that its prey must have passed this way. It rolls onwards, but is soon disappointed.

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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.

Read more ....

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.

Read more ....

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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