Monday, December 14, 2009
U.S. And Russia In Secret Cyber Warfare Talks
Russia and the US are in talks to combat the threat of cyber warfare, according to the New York TimesPhoto: CLARE KENDALL
US And Russia In 'Secret' Cyber Warfare Talks -- The Telegraph
Russia and the United States are discussing how best to safeguard the internet against hostile attacks.
The talks, which are taking place between the US, Russia and a United Nations arms control committee, are aimed at finding ways of strengthening internet security and limiting the military use of cyberspace, according to a report in the New York Times.
Online attacks against government websites, corporate computer systems and other business-critical infrastructures have increased in the last two years. Anonymous hackers have managed to access the Pentagon's computers and overwhelm government websites, and President Obama has ordered an urgent review of the United States' internet security.
Read more ....More News On These "Cyber Warfare Talks"
U.S and Russia in Talks to Heighten Security of Cyberspace -- FOX News
Russia and US in secret talks to fight net crime -- The Guardian
NY Times report: US and Russia in secret talks to deal with cyber-crime -- Top News
US, Russia talks on cyberspace security: report -- AFP
U.S., Russia discuss cybersecurity -- Times Of The Internet/UPI
US and Russia begin cyberwar limitation talks -- The Register
In Shift, U.S. Talks to Russia on Internet Security -- New York Times
U.S., Russia in Cyberweaponry Talks -- Gov. Info Security
Apple’s Next Media Frontier Will Be Streaming Video
From Gadget Lab:Video entertainment was “the one that got away” from Apple, but recent moves reveal the company is taking a second stab at the category, and that streaming video will play a major role.
The addition of video cameras to Apple’s latest iPhone and iPod Nano were just the first hints of the company’s new personal-media strategy. The company is also building a 500,000 square-foot data center in North Carolina, which could provide the massive bandwidth required for ubiquitous streaming video. And Apple’s recent acquisition of Lala suggests it’s interested in rebooting iTunes into a streaming service, according to Wall Street Journal. That means music, in Lala’s case, but the same infrastructure could be shared with streaming video.
Read more ....
Understanding Apples' Ancestors
Researchers study wild Malus orientalis in the Caucasus region.(Credit: Photo by Phil Forsline)
From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Dec. 14, 2009) — Wild Malus orientalis -- species of wild apples that could be an ancestor of today's domesticated apples -- are native to the Middle East and Central Asia. A new study comparing the diversity of recently acquired M. orientalis varieties from Georgia and Armenia with previously collected varieties originating in Russia and Turkey narrows the large population and establishes a core collection that will make M. orientalis more accessible to the breeding and research communities.
Read more ....
Turtles Act Like Chameleons
A dark-colored midland painted turtle darkens to adapt to its surroundings.Credit: John Rowe.
From Live Science:
Freshwater turtles’ skin and shells often match the color of their habitat’s substrate, which may help them deceive predators and prey alike. But what happens if turtles change abodes, from a black swamp, say, to a sandy-bottomed pond?
John W. Rowe, of Alma College in Michigan, and three colleagues collected gravid female midland painted turtles and red-eared sliders from the wild, brought them to the lab, and injected them with oxytocin, a hormone that induces egg laying.
Read more ....
Barley + Space = Space Beer!
From Wired Science:I love beer, and I love space. So how could I not love beer from space? I’m not usually one for beer gimmicks, but somehow Sapporo’s Space Barley is an exception.
The beer was made with grains descended from barley that spent five months in the Zvezda Service Module on the International Space Station. The very limited results, just 250 precious six-packs, will be sold through a lottery for 10,000 yen ($110) each. But only people living in Japan are eligible. Sigh.
Why are the Russian Academy of Sciences, Okayama University and presumably Russia’s space agency Roscosmos aiding this scheme? Well, science of course. And charity.
Read more ....
Carnival Of Space 133 With North Pole Mysteries, Astronomy And Future Space Colonization
From Next Big Future:
1. Above is a piece of the 370 megapixel image of 500,000 galaxies.
Phil Plait, the bad astronomer, discusses the huge image just released by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey Deep Field #1, a ginormous mosaic of the night sky.
Read more ....
Nano-Test Quickly Detects Cancer Tests
The test could detect the concentration of a single grain of salt dissolved in a large swimming pool, say rsearchers (Source: iStockphoto)From ABC News (Australia)/AFP:
Scientists have developed a nanosensor for the quick detection of cancers through a simple blood test.
A technique developed at Yale University in the United States allows scientists to "detect tiny amounts of cancer biomarkers in a small volume of whole blood in just 20 minutes," according to the report in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
WISE Satellite Set To Map The Infrared Universe
Photo: EYE FOR THE INVISIBLE: Technicians prepare the WISE satellite for launch. NASAFrom Scientific American:
NASA's latest space surveyor should be able to peer at distant galaxies and uncover dim objects right in our own celestial backyard.
Nestled into the payload of a Delta 2 rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California is a satellite that should open new targets for astronomical study both near and far. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), slated for launch no earlier than 6:09 A.M. Pacific Standard Time on December 11, is charged with mapping the sky in the mid-infrared to create an atlas of objects whose emitted light is invisible to human eyes and largely absorbed by Earth's atmosphere.
Read more ....
Cheap, Plastic Memory For Flexible Devices
Photo: Flexible flash: This plastic sheet is arrayed with 676 flash memory cells. Credit: Science/AAAS From Technology Review:
A new type of flash could be used in e-readers.
Cheap and plastic aren't words often associated with cutting-edge technology. But researchers in Tokyo have created a new kind of plastic low-cost flash memory that could find its way into novel flexible electronics.
Flash memory stores data electrically, in specially designed silicon transistors. Information can be recorded and read quickly and is retained even when the power is off. This makes flash ideal for MP3 players, cameras, memory cards, and USB drives. But the technology is still more expensive than conventional hard disks.
Read more ....
Video: NASA Drops A Helicopter From Midair To Test New Anti-Crash Tech
From Popular Science:
No stranger to rough landings, NASA just engineered a crash of its own design to test a new crash countermeasure for helicopters. NASA dropped a donated Army MD-500 carrying four crash test dummies from 35 feet, to determine whether a new honeycomb cushion made of Kevlar strapped to the bottom of the copter could absorb the brunt of the impact. The result: a more or less intact MD-500, and the cool impact video below.
Read more ....
Modern Life Causes Brain Overload, Study Finds
People are bombarded with the equivalent of 34 gigabytes of information a day.From the Telegraph:
The wealth of media in modern life means the average person is bombarded with enough information every day to overload a laptop computer, a study has found.
Through email, the internet, television and other media, people are deluged with around 100,500 words a day – equivalent to 23 words per second, researchers claim.
Scientists from the University of San Diego, California, who conducted the research, believe that the information overload may be having a detrimental effect on our brains.
Read more ....
Three Years Late, 'The Grizzly' Military Transport Plane Finally Takes To The Skies
(Click Image to Enlarge)We have lift-off: The A400 Airbus finally gets into the sky, and the design specifications that make it so special
From The Daily Mail:
Heading into the blue three years late, Airbus's troubled A400M 'flying truck' military transport plane lifts off for its maiden flight.
The plane took off from Seville, in Spain, yesterday, with the flags of nine countries emblazoned on its side - the seven Nato nations plus Malaysia, which has ordered several planes, and South Africa, which recently pulled out of its order.
Britain has ordered up to 20 of the planes but the project has been dogged by delays and cost-overuns.
Read more ....
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Suzaku Catches Retreat Of A Black Hole's Disk
Image: GX 339-4, illustrated here, is among the most dynamic binaries in the sky, with four major outbursts in the past seven years. In the system, an evolved star no more massive than the sun orbits a black hole estimated at 10 solar masses. (Credit: ESO/L. Calçada)From Science Daily:
ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2009) — Studies of one of the galaxy's most active black-hole binaries reveal a dramatic change that will help scientists better understand how these systems expel fast-moving particle jets.
Binary systems where a normal star is paired with a black hole often produce large swings in X-ray emission and blast jets of gas at speeds exceeding one-third that of light. What fuels this activity is gas pulled from the normal star, which spirals toward the black hole and piles up in a dense accretion disk.
Read more ....
Titan: A Climate Out Of This World
Titan in Saturn’s system: Titan (top) emerges from behind its parent planet, Saturn. Another satellite, Tethys, is visible at the bottom left of the picture. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science InstituteFrom Live Science:
Our knowledge of Titan has improved considerably over the last five years. Before that, Saturn's largest satellite had only been hastily approached by a handful of space probes.
In 1980, the Voyager-1 spacecraft took advantage of a flyby to take a few mysterious, yet frustrating close-ups of Titan's opaque, rusty atmosphere. Despite its color, Titan actually seemed to look a lot like the early Earth.
Read more ....
Legal Battles Rage Over E-Book Rights To Old Books
From CNET News:William Styron may have been one of the leading literary lions of recent decades, but his books are not selling much these days. Now his family has a plan to lure digital-age readers with e-book versions of titles like "Sophie's Choice," "The Confessions of Nat Turner" and Styron's memoir of depression, "Darkness Visible."
But the question of exactly who owns the electronic rights to such older titles is in dispute, making it a rising source of conflict in one of the publishing industry's last remaining areas of growth.
Read more ....
Genetic 'Map' Of Asia's Diversity
The study indicates that all of Asia was populated through one migration event.From The BBC:
An international scientific effort has revealed the genetics behind Asia's diversity.
The Human Genome Organisation's (HUGO) Pan-Asian SNP Consortium carried out a study of almost 2,000 people across the continent.
Their findings support the hypothesis that Asia was populated primarily through a single migration event from the south.
The researchers described their findings in the journal Science.
They found genetic similarities between populations throughout Asia and an increase in genetic diversity from northern to southern latitudes.
The team screened genetic samples from 73 Asian populations for more than 50,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).
Read more ....
Geminid Meteor Shower 2009: Where To Watch, What To Bring
From L.A. Times:
Sky-watchers, get ready for another late-night adventure. The Geminid meteor shower is to be at its peak tonight and into the wee hours of Monday morning. Though not as popular as the Perseids, these meteors generally put on a great show when they appear in our skies annually in December.
When you spot the Geminids, which emanate from the constellation Gemini (hence, their name), you will be observing debris from an extinct comet by the name of 3200 Phaethon. “It is, basically, the rocky skeleton of a comet that lost its ice after too many close encounters with the sun,” writes Tony Phillips in a NASA blog.
Read more ....
Getting Power From Coal Without Digging It Up
Photo: Truly clean coal: Swan Hills Synfuels generates a clean-burning gas mixture from coal at its underground gasification plant northwest of Edmonton. The company plans to generate 300 megawatts of power with the gas, while storing the resulting carbon dioxide in Alberta’s oil fields. Credit: Swan Hills Synfuels From Technology Review:
An Alberta project will transform coal deep beneath the ground into gas.
Converting coal in the ground directly into clean-burning gases could have huge environmental benefits--not the least of which would be the avoidance of destructive mining operations. The problem is, technology for underground coal gasification is still in its early stages.
Now the government of Alberta says it will give C$285 million ($271 million) to a coal gasification project by Calgary-based Swan Hills Synfuels that involves the deepest-ever operation to generate power from coal--without digging it up.
Read more ....
Troops Strike Up A Tune To Repair The Damage Of Brain Injuries
Band Aid Music could provide relief to hundreds of brain-injured veterans.Hanan Isachar/Superstock
From Popular Science:
The opening riff of “Takin’ Care of Business” thumps rhythmically from an iPod as a room full of middle-aged military veterans tap in time on drums. This is the sound of brain rehab.
Studies show that music can promote new neural connections, which Colorado State University neuroscientist Michael Thaut theorized could help overcome common symptoms of traumatic brain injury (TBI), such as short-term memory loss and impaired decision-making skills. Thaut and his colleagues enrolled 31 veterans suffering from TBI in a “neurologic music therapy” study where each drummer matches rhythms and tempos set by a bandleader. Last summer, they published results that show that after several 30-minute sessions, the group performed better on standard decision-making tests.
Read more ....
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)