Will Amazon Open The Kindle To Developers?

From CNET:

We're heading into the holiday buying season, which means the introduction of new gadgets and the media's annual anointment of the season's hottest tech toy. Plenty of pundits think electronic book readers will sell briskly this year, which got us thinking: Will Amazon update its Kindle e-book reader in time for the holidays?

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British Museum's Aztec Artefacts 'As Evil As Nazi Lampshades Made From Human Skin'

Showstopper: A turquoise mask which probably represents the sun god Tonatiuh

From The Daily Mail:

Ten minutes into the British Museum's Moctezuma exhibition, devoted to the last Aztec ruler before the Spanish Conquest, you come across a statue of an eagle with a cavity in its back. The cavity, you will discover, was designed to hold the hearts of the victims of human sacrifices.

This detail, for me, obliterates any observation about whether the sculpture is otherwise well crafted. Similarly, I don't care whether a Nazi lampshade fashioned from human skin is beautifully made or not. And the same concern blocks out a lot of one's interest in this exhibition.

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Peruvian Glacial Retreats Linked To European Events Of Little Ice Age

University of New Hampshire master's student Jean Taggart '09, coauthor of a new study published in this week's Science, takes samples from a glacial moraine in southern Peru. (Credit: Joe Licciardi)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2009) — A new study that reports precise ages for glacial moraines in southern Peru links climate swings in the tropics to those of Europe and North America during the Little Ice Age approximately 150 to 350 years ago. The study, published this week in the journal Science, "brings us one step closer to understanding global-scale patterns of glacier activity and climate during the Little Ice Age," says lead author Joe Licciardi, associate professor of Earth sciences at the University of New Hampshire. "The more we know about our recent climate past, the better we can understand our modern and future climate."

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Children Who Get Spanked Have Lower IQs

From Live Science:

Spanking can get kids to behave in a hurry, but new research suggests it can do more harm than good to their noggins. The study, involving hundreds of U.S. children, showed the more a child was spanked the lower his or her IQ compared with others.

"All parents want smart children," said study researcher Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire. "This research shows that avoiding spanking and correcting misbehavior in other ways can help that happen."

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Photon 'Machine Gun' Could Power Quantum Computers

Entangled photons can now be controlled (Image: Dan Talson/Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

THERE is a simple rule of computing that holds true even in the weird quantum world: increase the number of units of information available and you boost computing power. Raising the number of quantum bits, or qubits, carries an even greater reward – every additional qubit doubles the computing power.

But raising the number of qubits has proven tricky because of the difficulty of reliably producing entangled particles. Now a team has designed a system that should fire out barrages of entangled photons with machine-gun regularity.

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10 Wonders To Visit Before They Disappear

Credit: Ralph Clevenger/Corbis

From Cosmos:

As global warming sets in, some of the world's wonders may not wait around for you to experience them. Here are the top 10 places you need to visit before the climate changes.

EXPERIENCING is believing. It's one thing to marvel at a documentary about the Great Barrier Reef, and quite another to immerse yourself in the silent beauty and colourful diversity of the world's largest reef system.

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The Tech Behind Surrogates's All-Robot World

Director Jonathan Mostow with a surrogate used in the film to show buyers the mechanics of their potential proxies.

From Popular Mechanics:

PM's Digital Hollywood sits down with Surrogates director Jonathan Mostow to discuss the unexpected challenges of filming a world where everyone looks like a perfect robot. Plus, a chronology of movie androids.

When robot stand-ins populate the world in a movie—as they do in Touchstone Picture’s Surrogates, out Sept. 25—­every character in the frame has to look perfect. And that turned into a headache for director Jonathan Mostow. “Usually you hire background actors off the street,” he says. “We were flying in models.”

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Self-Regulated Morphine Delivery For Wounded Warfighters

Safer Pain Relief Wounded soldiers could soon administer their
own morphine without watchful medics U.S. Army

From Popular Science:

DARPA-funded nanotech drug automatically regulates its morphine dose on the battlefield

Medics still use morphine to relieve the pain of wounded soldiers on the modern battlefield, but have to watch out for morphine reducing breathing and blood pressure to dangerous levels. That may all change with a DARPA-backed combination drug that has successfully limited morphine delivery when it detects low blood oxygen levels.

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Mars Probe Watches Water-Ice Fade

Water-ice is seen to fade over time in this 12m crater within Arcadia Planitia

From The BBC:

Large deposits of nearly pure water-ice may lurk just below the Martian surface, much nearer the equator than previously thought, suggest new images.

The pictures acquired by a Nasa orbiter show white material exposed by fresh meteorite impacts fading over time - behaviour expected of ice on Mars.

An onboard instrument also detected the tell-tale chemical signature of water.

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Satellite Images Of The Second Iranian Nuclear Site

The overall view of the Iranian site. The mountain under which the site is built is to the lower right of the image. (Credit: GeoEye satellite image/IHS Jane's analysis)

GeoEye Gives Look At Iranian Nuclear Site -- Deep Tech/CNET

Satellite imagery company GeoEye has released a photo of what it says is the controversial and underground Iranian uranium enrichment site that came to light last week.

The photo, taken Saturday, shows the facility at a military site about 20 miles north-northeast of Qum and 100 miles southwest of Tehran, GeoEye said. An analysis of the photo by IHS Jane's, a defense intelligence consulting firm, said the facility has a primary and several auxiliary entrances, ventilation shafts, a surface-to-air missile site, and quarry and construction equipment.

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My Comment: The imaging is very clear. We also must give them credit for making it public as quickly as they did.

UK Warned As Plague Of Bee-Eating Hornets Spreads North In France

The Asian predatory hornet, Vespa velutina. Photograph: Jean Haxaire/AFP

From The Guardian:

For five years they have wreaked havoc in the fields of south-western France, scaring locals with their venomous stings and ravaging the bee population to feed their rapacious appetites. Now, according to French beekeepers, Asian predatory hornets have been sighted in Paris for the first time, raising the prospect of a nationwide invasion which entomologists fear could eventually reach Britain.

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Fresh Doubts Over Hitler's Death After Tests On Bullet Hole Skull Reveal It Belonged To A Woman

Revealed: The skull with a bullet hole, kept in a Russian archive, is a woman's

From The Daily Mail:

Adolf Hitler may not have shot himself dead and perhaps did not even die in his bunker, it emerged yesterday.

A skull fragment believed for decades to be the Nazi leader’s has turned out to be that of a woman under 40 after DNA analysis.

Scientists and historians had long thought it to be conclusive proof that Hitler shot himself in the head after taking a cyanide pill on 30 April 1945 rather than face the ignominy of capture.

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My Comment: I love a mystery like this one.

To Explain Longevity Gap, Look Past Health System

Image: Victor Koen

From New York Times:

If you’re not rich and you get sick, in which industrialized country are you likely to get the best treatment?

The conventional answer to this question has been: anywhere but the United States. With its many uninsured citizens and its relatively low life expectancy, the United States has been relegated to the bottom of international health scorecards.

But a prominent researcher, Samuel H. Preston, has taken a closer look at the growing body of international data, and he finds no evidence that America’s health care system is to blame for the longevity gap between it and other industrialized countries. In fact, he concludes, the American system in many ways provides superior treatment even when uninsured Americans are included in the analysis.

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Spot Discovered On Dwarf Planet Haumea Shows Up Red And Rich With Organics

Artist's rendition of Haumea and its dark red spot.
(Credit: Image courtesy of Europlanet Media Centre)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2009) — A dark red area discovered on the dwarf planet Haumea appears to be richer in minerals and organic compounds than the surrounding icy surface.

The discovery will be presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam by Dr Pedro Lacerda on Wednesday 16 September.

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The Challenge Of Making Real 'Surrogate' Skin

Image from Tech Digest

From Live Science:

The new movie "Surrogates," starring Bruce Willis, depicts a world in which people live through "surries", highly realistic humanoid robots. But without realistic skin, robots will never have that humanlike personal touch, and will not have the degree of social acceptance that robots would need to have to share the world with the rest of us.

A recent paper details research into this area. In "Towards Humanlike Social Touch for Sociable Robotics," John Cabibihan and his fellow scientists detailed the reasons for testing and developing realistic skin for social robots.

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Population: Overconsumption Is The Real Problem -- A Commentary

Human consumption plans are part of the problem (Image: Alex Wong/Getty)

From The New Scientist:

THERE is a pervading myth that efforts to fight climate change and other environmental perils will be to no avail unless we "do something" about population growth. Even seasoned analysts talk about the threat of "exponential" population growth. But there is no exponential growth. In most of the world fertility rates are falling fast, and the countries where population growth continues are those that contribute least to our planetary predicament.

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Population: Technology Will Save Us -- A Commentary

Human resourcefulness and technological innovation may just help save the environment, argues Jesse Ausubel (Image: Marc Asnin/Redux)

From New Scientist:

Throughout history, technological innovation has saved us from being overwhelmed by overpopulation, and Jesse Ausubel tells Alison George why he is convinced that human resourcefulness can pull the fat out of the fire even now

You're known as a techno-optimist. Why have you got such faith in technology's power to save the environment?

I regard myself as neither an optimist nor a pessimist. But I do think that humanity is ingenious and enterprising. Throughout the ages people have doubted that their descendants could exist, with improving health and longevity, in the numbers and densities we do now. In the 19th century it was common to reason that horse manure or chimney smoke would bury or choke cities. Yet air quality in New York City and water quality in New York harbour are better than when I or my mother was a child. Over time people find, invent and spread solutions for many environmental problems.

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Population: Enough Of Us Now -- A Commentary

Cities contain many people, but it is not just numbers that put strain on resources, it is the way we consume also (Image: Duncan McKenzie/Getty)

From New Scientist:

GLOBAL population growth has slowed significantly, but it hasn't stopped. By 2050 there may be about 35 per cent more people on Earth than there are today. We are already seeing increasing shortages of food, water and other resources and growing numbers of hungry people.

Yet to embark on any discussion about limiting our numbers is to enter sensitive and controversial territory. Perhaps this is not surprising, as in the 1960s, when population growth became an issue of widespread concern, the discussions often had a racist undertone, in which the "well-off" focused on the exploding populations of "underdeveloped nations".

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4 People Who Faced Disaster—And How They Made it Out Alive

Frank Vaplon saved his home from a California wildfire with mail-order firefighting equipment and plenty of preparation.

From Popular Mechanics:

Some disasters are simply not survivable. But most are, and research on human behavior suggests that the difference between life and death often comes down to the simple—yet surprisingly difficult—task of recognizing threats before they overwhelm you, then working through them as discrete challenges. The people who survive disasters tend to be better prepared and more capable of making smart decisions under pressure. Not everyone is born with these traits, but almost anyone can learn them. Here’s how to wire your brain for survival.

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Augmented Google Earth Gets Real-Time People, Cars, Clouds

Real-Time Cars in Google Earth courtesy Georgia Institute of Technology

From Popular Science:

Researchers from Georgia Tech have devised methods to take real-time, real-world information and layer it onto Google Earth, adding dynamic information to the previously sterile Googlescape.

They use live video feeds (sometimes from many angles) to find the position and motion of various objects, which they then combine with behavioral simulations to produce real-time animations for Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth.

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