Stormy Times For Cloud Computing?

From Times Online:

Concern over data loss and legal uncertainty may delay the development of cloud computing, experts warned on Monday.

Cloud computing involves the storage of data online, rather than on locally networked servers or machines. The best known services are provided by Google and Microsoft.

Last weekend, Microsoft in the United States was forced to admit that it had irretrievably lost all online data belonging to owners of the T-Mobile Sidekick, a smartphone that backs up its data online, in the cloud.

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British Men Have More Stamina In Bed Than Foreigners, Study Finds

British men last longer in bed than their foreign counterparts, a study has found
Photo: GETTY IMAGES

From The Telegraph:

British men have more stamina between the sheets than their foreign counterparts – lasting just 10 minutes, a study has found.

Researchers in Holland measured the sexual performance of nearly 500 men from five countries against the clock.

They found that British men had sex for 10 minutes on average before reaching an orgasm.

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Andromeda Galaxy Captured In Crystal Clear Detail By Nasa's Swift Satellite

The Swift image has revealed new features not seen in previous composites of M31 (pictured)

From The Daily Mail:

Nasa's Swift satellite has captured the highest-resolution view of our neighbouring galaxy Andromeda.

Also known as M31, it contains an incredible one trillion stars and is the largest galaxy in our small section of the Universe.

Swift, which usually searches for distant cosmic explosions, turned its incredibly powerful ultraviolet telescope onto our celestial neighbour to achieve the shot.

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Giant Impact Near India -- Not Mexico -- May Have Doomed Dinosaurs

Three-dimensional reconstruction of the submerged Shiva crater (~500 km diameter) at the Mumbai Offshore Basin, western shelf of India from different cross-sectional and geophysical data. The overlying 4.3-mile-tick Cenozoic strata and water column were removed to show the morphology of the crater. (Credit: Image courtesy of Geological Society Of America)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 15, 2009) — A mysterious basin off the coast of India could be the largest, multi-ringed impact crater the world has ever seen. And if a new study is right, it may have been responsible for killing the dinosaurs off 65 million years ago.

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Monkey Drumming Suggests The Origin Of Music

An illustration of a rhesus macaque drumming with cage doors.
Credit: K. Lamberty, PNAS.

From Live Science:

When monkeys drum, they activate brain networks linked with communication, new findings that suggest a common origin of primate vocal and nonvocal communication systems and shed light on the origins of language and music.

In the wild, monkeys known as macaques drum by shaking branches or thumping on dead logs. Similar behavior has been seen in non-human primates — for instance, gorillas beat their chests and clap their hands, while chimpanzees drum on tree buttresses.

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Atlantic Salmon Shortage's Ripple Effect

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From CBS News:

(CBS) In Chile's northern Patagonia, in channels sheltered by the Andes Mountains, the salmon are dying, CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassmann reports.

At fish farms, divers check for signs of a waterborne virus called ISA: Infectious Salmon Anemia.

Harmless to humans and deadly to Atlantic salmon, it's the mostly popular fresh fish to eat for American consumers.

ISA has killed millions of salmon in Chile.

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Rocking On With Hot Rocks Geothermal Energy

From NOVA:

The world is getting hotter. This is because of the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, due mainly to our excessive burning of fossil fuels. We burn them for the energy that is needed increasingly in our daily life – to drive to school, cool ourselves on hot summer days, blow-dry our hair and listen to our music. The resulting greenhouse gases trap radiation from the sun, preventing it from escaping back into space, causing the planet’s temperature to rise. But not all of the planet’s heat comes from the Sun; some of it is within the Earth; and rather than causing global warming it could help to wean us off fossil fuels.

This heat, geothermal energy, lies in abundance beneath our feet. If the energy stored in hot rocks inside the Earth could be tapped and used instead of fossil fuels, it could help to reduce the threat of climate change.

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20 Years After The Bay Area Quake: Are We Better Prepared?

Photo: Repair crews in Oakland, Calif., examine damage to the Cypress Structure during the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. Dave Bartruff / Corbis

From Time Magazine:

The San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics were just about to start Game 3 of the 1989 World Series on Oct. 17 when the shaking began. ABC play-by-play announcer Al Michaels managed to tell viewers, "We're having an earth—" before the signal went dead. The temblor was brief — just 15 seconds — but the damage caused by the 6.9-magnitude quake was impressive. It killed 63 people, injured thousands and caused $7 billion worth of damage throughout California's Bay Area, including major destruction to the Oakland Bay Bridge. "It was a good sized shock," says Peter Yanev, chairman of Risk Solutions International and the author of Peace of Mind in Earthquake Country.

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YouTube’s Bandwidth Bill Is Zero. Welcome To The New Net

From Epicenter:

YouTube may pay less to be online than you do, a new report on internet connectivity suggests, calling into question a recent analysis arguing Google’s popular video service is bleeding money and demonstrating how the internet has continued to morph to fit user’s behavior.

In fact, with YouTube’s help, Google is now responsible for at least 6 percent of the internet’s traffic, and likely more — and may not be paying an ISP at all to serve up all that content and attached ads.

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Are Online Currencies Striking Gold?

Without the gold standard, argues consultant Dave Birch, pounds are no more real than World of Warcraft gold. Photograph: Getty Images

From The Guardian:

Money. The stuff that makes the world go round. Every day we earn it, spend it, exchange it and lose it. But you won't find any Linden dollars, Eve ISK or Facebook credits down the back of the couch.

Virtual currencies like these are used for transactions in online worlds and social networking sites. While real-world currencies are on the slide, many virtual ones are going from strength to strength. In the second quarter of the year the equivalent of $144m (£91m) was traded on the LindeX, the official currency exchange of Second Life, where residents buy and sell Linden dollars for their US counterpart – a 20% increase on the previous quarter, while the US economy shrank by 1%. Trading activity increased by 6% in the last quarter of 2008.

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Carbon Dioxide 'May Improve Taste Of Champagne'

It's all in the fizz-sensing cells found in the tongue Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Carbon dioxide in champagne bubbles may enhance the taste of the drink, scientists revealed today.

A team headed by Charles Zuker, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, found that taste-receptor cells in the tongue respond to carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas that gives sparkling drinks their fizz.

The work showed for the first time that the tongue's fizz-sensing cells are the same taste-receptor cells that detect sourness.

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Seamlessly Melding Man And Machine

Image: Living interface: Muscle cells (shown here) are grown on a biological scaffold. Severed nerves remaining from the lost limb connect to the muscle cells in the interface, which transmits electrical signals that can be used to control the artificial arm. Credit: Paul Cederna

From Technology Review:

Tiny implants that connect to nerve cells could make it easier to control prosthetic limbs.

A novel implant seeded with muscle cells could better integrate prosthetic limbs with the body, allowing amputees greater control over robotic appendages. The construct, developed at the University of Michigan, consists of tiny cups, made from an electrically conductive polymer, that fit on nerve endings and attract the severed nerves. Electrical signals coming from the nerve can then be translated and used to move the limb.

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Throwable Robot And Remote-Controlled Mini-Helicopter Unveiled As Latest Battlefield Surveillance Technology

Eye in the sky: The lightweight helicopter has four cameras and can hover over enemy positions giving the operator real-time intelligence

From The Daily Mail:

Soldiers on the battlefield could soon benefit from new state-of-the-art surveillance equipment that can remotely pinpoint snipers, ambushes and explosive devices.

A throwable wheeled robot and a remote-controlled helicopter were both unveiled at a demonstration at the Defence and Equipment Support at Abbey Wood, near Bristol.

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New Israeli Battery Provides Thousands Of Hours Of Power

Photo: Prof. Yair Ein-Eli in his Technion lab, where he invented a battery that is potentially as eco-friendly as sand. Photo: Technion

From Jerusalem Post:

A new kind of portable electrochemical battery that can produce thousands of hours of power - and soon replace the expensive regular or rechargeable batteries in hearing aids and sensors and eventually in cellphones, laptop computers and even electric cars - has been developed at Haifa's Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

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'Magnetricity' Observed And Measured For First Time

The magnetic equivalent of electricity in a 'spin ice' material: atom sized north and south poles in spin ice drift in opposite directions when a magnetic field is applied. (Credit: UCL/LCN)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 15, 2009) — A magnetic charge can behave and interact just like an electric charge in some materials, according to new research led by the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN).

The findings could lead to a reassessment of current magnetism theories, as well as significant technological advances.

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Study: Tingle of Carbonation Is Tasty, Too

From Live Science:

Fizzy beverages don't just tickle the tongue. They also rev up taste buds that can detect the drink's bubble-inducing carbon dioxide.

Though this discovery was made in mice, researchers say a rodent's sense of taste is similar to ours.

When a person, or mouse, devours a snack or downs a beverage, taste receptor cells on the tongue (which are clustered into taste buds) detect certain molecules in that food or drink. The receptor cells then send a message to the part of the brain involved in tasting.

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A Swim Through The Ocean's Future

As ocean water becomes more acidic, corals and shellfish must spend more energy to make their calcium carbonate shells. Photos courtesy of NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center Coral Reef Ecosystem Division, Photo by Benjamin Richards

From The Smithsonian:

Can a remote, geologically weird island in the South Pacific forecast the fate of coral reefs?

I drop the dinghy’s anchor below the red-streaked cliffs of Maug. The uninhabited island group is among the most remote of the Mariana Islands, which are territories of the United States in the Western Pacific. Maug's three steep, parentheses-shaped islands are the top of an underwater volcano.

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Mystery Space "Ribbon" Found at Solar System's Edge

From National Geographic:

In a discovery that took astronomers by surprise, the first full-sky map of the solar system's edge—more than 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away—has revealed a bright "ribbon" of atoms called ENAs.

The solar system is surrounded by a protective "bubble" called the heliosphere.

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Tiny Moon Feeds Largest Ring Around Saturn

This artist's illustration shows a nearly invisible ring around Saturn – the largest of the giant planet's many rings. It was discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Keck

From The Cosmos:

PARIS: Stunned astronomers have discovered a new mega-ring around Saturn and believe its genesis is a small, distant moon.

Phoebe, a Saturnian satellite measuring only 214 km across, probably provides the record-breaking tenuous circle of dusty and icy debris, they report today in the British journal Nature.

The largest ring identified so far in the Solar System, the circle starts about six million km from Saturn and extends outwardly by another 12 million km, within the orbit of Phoebe.

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Banana Marks Seed Bank Milestone

From BBC:

An international seed bank has reached its target of collecting 10% of the world's wild plants, with seeds of a pink banana among its latest entries.

The wild banana, Musa itinerans, is a favourite of wild Asian elephants.

Seeds from the plant, which is under threat from agriculture, join 1.7 billion already stored by Kew's Millennium Seed Bank partnership.

The project has been described as an "insurance strategy" against future biodiversity losses.

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