Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Google's Real-Time Search Ready To Challenge Bing
From PC World:
Google on Monday unveiled its real-time search capability, the latest salvo in its ongoing feature war with Bing. Microsoft's search engine already integrates real-time Twitter and Facebook results. Now, both search engines have released their initial real-time products, and there's a lot to like from the two major search brands. Let's take a look at how Bing's Twitter search matches up against Google's real-time search.
Read more ....
Breakthrough Flu Drug Might Already Exist
Image: Structurally sound: The neuraminidase protein of the H1N1 virus is particularly adept at mutating to avoid attack. In this crystal structure, the mutations that allow it to resist Tamiflu and other antiviral drugs are visible as multicolored stick structures. Credit: DaniFrom Technology Review:
Fragments of known drugs could lead to a more robust antiviral for H1N1 and other flu variants.
The flu virus is a wily target, constantly mutating to avoid attack from the immune system and from antiviral drugs like Tamiflu. But in research presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in San Diego, scientists announced a new method for fighting pandemic influenzas such as H1N1 (swine) and H5N1 (avian).
Read more ....
Dolphins, Sea Lions To Serve As Marine Guardians Of Naval Base
Photo: Marine Watchdogs: Dolphins and sea lions will soon be "sniffing" out suspicious swimmers near Puget Sound. ISTOCKPHOTO/EDINFrom Scientific American:
The newest batch of sentries at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor will be paid in fish.
The newest batch of sentries at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor will not have to wear uniforms. But they won't get to clock out for breaks -- and they will be paid in fish.
The base near Washington's Puget Sound is slated to receive up to 20 Navy-trained bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions to patrol the shoreline around the submarine base as part of a bolstered security initiative started after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Read more ....
3 Bets the DOE Is Placing On Science To Break The Climate Stalemate
From Wired Science:
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for energy put out its second call for new ideas, and this time, the agency has narrowed its focused to three research fields.
The new arm of the Department of Energy, which is dedicated to high-risk, high-reward innovations, is betting $100 million on batteries for cars, new materials for capturing carbon, and microorganisms that can convert sunlight and carbon dioxide directly into fuels.
Read more ....Volcanic Blast's Devastation Confirmed By Pollen
New pollen and soil evidence suggests the eruption of Toba in Indonesia 73,000 years ago was so severe, the global environment was thrown into chaos. iStockPhotoFrom Discovery News:
A massive volcanic explosion in Indonesia rocked the planet 73,000 years ago, cooling temperatures and devastating populations of our ancestors.
It takes a heck of a disaster to wipe the trees off of India. But 73,000 years ago, the titanic eruption of Toba in Indonesia did exactly that, according to a new study, brushing the region clean almost overnight as it kicked the planet into a cold snap that would persist for almost 2,000 years.
Read more ....
Google Chief: Only Miscreants Worry About Net Privacy
From Register:'If you don't want anyone to know, don't do it'.
If you're concerned about Google retaining your personal data, then you must be doing something you shouldn't be doing. At least that's the word from Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," Schmidt tells CNBC, sparking howls of incredulity from the likes of Gawker.Read more ....
Dueling E-Book Readers
Watch CBS News Videos Online
From CBS News:
Natali Del Conte Compares Five Top Offerings of This Holiday Season.
(CBS) One of this year's hot gift items is the e-book reader -- portable digital devices used to read books and magazines.
They started taking off in 2001, but were very basic. Today, they're sophisticated, interactive and can perform more functions than just holding text -- and they're experiencing explosive growth.
Read more ....
Monday, December 7, 2009
Single-Atom Transistor Discovered
a) Colored scanning electron microscope image of the measured device. Aluminum top gate is used to induce a two-dimensional electron layer at the silicon-silicon oxide interface below the metallization. The barrier gate is partially below the top gate and depletes the electron layer in the vicinity of the phosphorus donors (the red spheres added to the original image). The barrier gate can also be used to control the conductivity of the device. All the barrier gates in the figure form their own individual transistors. (b) Measured differential conductance through the device at 4 Tesla magnetic field. The red and the yellow spheres illustrate the spin-down and -up states of a donor electron which induce the lines of high conductivity clearly visible in the figure. (Credit: American Chemical Society)From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Dec. 7, 2009) — Researchers from Helsinki University of Technology (Finland), University of New South Wales (Australia), and University of Melbourne (Australia) have succeeded in building a working transistor, whose active region composes only of a single phosphorus atom in silicon.
Read more ....
Scientists: Northern Forests Need Saving, Too
From Live Science:
When fire destroys forests, or when discarded wood products are burned at the dump, carbon dioxide (CO2) escapes into the air. Hence, in part, the uproar denouncing the slash-and-burn destruction of tropical jungles. But let’s not overlook another great woodland biome: the boreal forest.
That’s the plea voiced in a recent opinion paper by Corey J.A. Bradshaw of the University of Adelaide in Australia and two colleagues. They point out that far northern forests represent a third of all remaining woodlands and 30 percent of all terrestrially stored carbon on Earth. Those vast coniferous tracts covering much of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, and Russia are still relatively unscathed, but they face increasing threats.
Read more ....
MIT Harnesses Online Crowds To Beat Darpa Balloon Challenge In Just 9 Hours
DARPA Network Challenge Winner MIT's team claimed victory just nine hours
after the first balloons went up DARPA
after the first balloons went up DARPA
From Popular Science:
The Pentagon's DARPA agency wanted to know how to filter trustworthy information from social networks; MIT had the answer.
Groups of friends and strangers spent more than a month preparing for perhaps the greatest social networking competition in history. All wanted to be the first to find 10 red weather balloons scattered across the continental U.S. on December 5, and claim a $40,000 prize from the Pentagon's DARPA agency.
Read more ....
My Comment: That was fast .... it also tells everyone that the power of social networks should not be ignored.
Personalised Vaccines Could Protect All Children
Time for your personalised shot (Image: Phanie Agency/Rex Features)From New Scientist:
CHILDREN whose genetic make-up means they may not be protected by the standard form of a vaccine could in future be given a personalised shot. This is the prospect raised by the discovery of gene variants that seem to predict whether an individual will produce enough antibodies in response to a vaccine to protect them against disease.
Read more ....
Childhood Obesity Linked To Mutant Gene
A genetic mutation may be the real reason overweight children cannot shift the pounds Photo: Alamy
From The Telegraph:
Childhood obesity could be caused by a genetic mutation, scientists at Cambridge University believe.
Findings show for the first time that the condition can be a genetic one, rather than the result of over feeding.
The study could have a major impact on the decision of social services to take obese children into care where they believe they are being abused.
Read more ....
Computer Pop-Ups Waste Time Even After They Have Disappeared
Computer annoyance: Pop-ups waste more time than they take to close, a study has foundFrom The Daily Mail:
The annoyance of computer screen pop-ups lasts long after they have disappeared or been closed, research has found.
Although they might stay on the screen for just a few seconds, pop-ups make us lose more time trying to find our place and resume the task that was interrupted, a Cardiff University study concluded.
The research, led by Dr Helen Hodgetts and Professor Dylan Jones, examined the cost of on-screen interruptions in terms of the time taken to complete a simple seven-step computer task.
Read more ....
Ancient Site Reveals Signs Of Mass Cannibalism
Photo: The site contains remains of 500 "intentionally mutilated" humans.From The BBC:
Archaeologists have found evidence of mass cannibalism at a 7,000-year-old human burial site in south-west Germany, the journal Antiquity reports.
The authors say their findings provide rare evidence of cannibalism in Europe's early Neolithic period.
Up to 500 human remains unearthed near the village of Herxheim may have been cannibalised.
The "intentionally mutilated" remains included children and even unborn babies, the researchers say.
The German site was first excavated in 1996 and then explored again between 2005 and 2008.
Read more ....
Should You Treat Your Children Like Dogs?
Lucy Atkins's children Isabella, Ted and Sam with RocketFrom The Guardian:
Can dog-whisperering techniques used to control canines also work with children?
On parenting blogs, websites and Twitter, the guilty admissions are all the same: the training techniques of Cesar Millan, AKA "The Dog Whisperer", work on kids too. Millan has published four books; his show runs on a perpetual reel on the National Geographic channel. "As I watched him work with an extremely aggressive pit bull," admits a woman called TheMentorMom on Minti.com, "I saw that some of his techniques and philosophies applied to teaching children."
Read more ....
Google Launches Real-Time Search
From Wall Street Journal:Search-engine giant Google Inc. on Monday disclosed partnerships with social Web-sites Facebook and MySpace, and unveiled new technology that enables it to incorporate most-current updates by users of those social networks into its results.
Google said its real-time search technology will feature a scrolling list of near-instantaneous updates from a wide range of other sources, including micro-blogging service Twitter, news sites and documents.
Read more ....
Mammoth Extinction Altered Ecosystem
New evidence suggests that changes in the North American ecosystem didn't kill the mammoth - their demise may have brought the changes about. Credit: WikimediaFrom Cosmos:
SYDNEY: The extinction of mammoths in North America at the end of the last ice age was not caused by a change in the ecosystem: it's what triggered the changes, a new study suggests.
The study also elucidates a possible cause for the demise of mammoths and mastodons 15,000 years ago, and researchers say that the expanded incidence of fire in the landscape - suspected of being caused by human arrival - only appeared after the extinction.
Read more ....
Headed Toward Extinction: The Light Bulb
From CBS News:
I come not to praise the incandescent light bulb. I come to bury it.
The familiar incandescent Edison bulb debuted 130 years ago, on December 31, 1879. And the next day, its death spiral will begin. Australia has imposed regulations that will phase the bulb out in 2010 and the European Union will follow in 2012.
The U.S. meanwhile, will get rid of them through new efficiency regulations in stages. 100-watt incandescents will vanish in 2012, followed by 75-watts a year later and 60-watts a year after that.
Read more ....
Superbright Supernova Is First Of Its Kind
In this schematic illustration of the material ejected from SN 2007bi, the radioactive nickel core (white) decays to cobalt, emitting gamma rays and positrons that excite surrounding layers (textured yellow) rich in heavy elements like iron. The outer layers (dark shadow) are lighter elements such as oxygen and carbon, where any helium must reside, which remain unilluminated and do not contribute to the visible spectrum. (Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Dec. 5, 2009) — An extraordinarily bright, extraordinarily long-lasting supernova named SN 2007bi, snagged in a search by a robotic telescope, turns out to be the first example of the kind of stars that first populated the Universe. The superbright supernova occurred in a nearby dwarf galaxy, a kind of galaxy that's common but has been little studied until now, and the unusual supernova could be the first of many such events soon to be discovered.
Read more ....
Skin Cream Secrets Revealed
Researchers examine skin cream on the nanoscale to better understand what makes it feel smoothCredit: dreamstime
From Live Science:
If asked to describe how skin cream feels, you might use words like "smooth," "thick," or "greasy."
But for Ohio State University mechanical engineering professor Bharat Bhushan, these words aren't good enough. Using a special instrument, he has gleaned new understanding of how these creams interact with skin on the nanoscale, bringing a more quantitative measure to the smooth sensation.
Read more ....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)