New Displays For E-Readers: Read All About It

Photo: Getty Images

From The Economist:

Display technology: Readers of electronic books must choose between long battery life or vibrant, living colour. Could they have both?

THE sudden surge in the popularity of e-readers—slate-like devices, such as Amazon’s Kindle, on which electronic books can be read—has been one of the big surprises of 2009. Recessions are often a good time to launch new products, as old certainties are questioned and consumer tastes shift. The iPod made its debut in 2001 in the depths of America’s recession, and e-readers may prove to be a similar success story this time. But today’s e-readers, like that first iPod, are technologically quite simple. Most of them have a monochromatic screen to display text and black-and-white pictures, and none can handle video.

Even so, around 5m e-readers will be sold worldwide in 2009, according to iSuppli, a market-research firm, and a further 12m in 2010. The Kindle is by far the most popular e-reader, but there are many others.

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Tremors Between Slip Events: More Evidence of Great Quake Danger to Seattle

Seattle skyline with Mount Rainier in the background. (Credit: iStockphoto/Natalia Bratslavsky)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 16, 2009) — For most of a decade, scientists have documented unfelt and slow-moving seismic events, called episodic tremor and slip, showing up in regular cycles under the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state and Vancouver Island in British Columbia. They last three weeks on average and release as much energy as a magnitude 6.5 earthquake.

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Robotic Planes Capture Detailed Images Of Remote Antarctic

After three stokes of bad luck, the group launches the unmanned aerial vehicle in mission No. 4, a 15-hour trip to Terra Nova Bay and back. Credit:Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science.

From Live Science:

SAN FRANCISCO — Unmanned planes flying over one of the most forbidding regions of Antarctica have captured the first close-up images of the area, where the cold, dense seawater that drives the ocean's circulation is formed.

These unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are proving a boon to scientists who study the frozen regions at Earth's poles, many parts of which simply aren't reachable to humans.

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Scientists Decode Entire Genetic Code Of Cancer

Cracking the Cancer Code A cluster of breast cancer cells, with blue ones marking actively growing cells and yellow marking dying cells. Could scientists crack their code next? Wellcome Trust

From Popular Science:

And cigarette smokers get a free mutation in every pack.

In a major step toward understanding cancer, one of the biggest problems bedeviling modern medicine, scientists have now cracked the genetic code for two of the most common cancers. This marks just the beginning of an international effort to catalog all the genes that go wrong among the many types of human cancer, the BBC reports.

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Susan Boyle's I Dreamed A Dream Audition Tops List Of Most Watched YouTube Video This Year With 120m Hits

From The Daily Mail:

Britain's Got Talent runner-up Susan Boyle was the star of the most-watched clip on video website YouTube this year, figures showed today.

The Scottish singer's rendition of I Dreamed A Dream on the television show was watched more than 120 million times by viewers across the world.

She netted more than three times the number of internet hits achieved by the second most-watched video of 2009.

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The Publishing Disruption

From The Futurist:

What a unique thing a book is. Made from a tree, it has a hundred or more flexible pages that contain written text, enabling the book to contain a large sum of information in a very small volume. Before paper, clay tablets, sheepskin parchment, and papyrus were all used to store information with far less efficiency. Paper itself was once so rare and valuable that the Emperor of China had guards stationed around his paper possessions.

Before the invention of the printing press, books were written by hand, and few outside of monasteries knew how to read. There were only a few thousand books in all of Europe in the 14th century. Charlemagne himself took great effort to learn how to read, but never managed to learn how to write, which still put him ahead of most kings of the time, who were generally illiterate.

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Russians Confirm That UK Climate Scientists Manipulated Data To Exaggerate Global Warming

From The Telegraph:

Climategate just got much, much bigger. And all thanks to the Russians who, with perfect timing, dropped this bombshell just as the world’s leaders are gathering in Copenhagen to discuss ways of carbon-taxing us all back to the dark ages.

Feast your eyes on this news release from Rionovosta, via the Ria Novosti agency, posted on Icecap. (Hat Tip: Richard North)

A discussion of the November 2009 Climatic Research Unit e-mail hacking incident, referred to by some sources as “Climategate,” continues against the backdrop of the abortive UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) discussing alternative agreements to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that aimed to combat global warming.

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Calls To Debate 'Fertility Outsourcing'

Most countries do not permit commercial surrogacy, say experts (Source: iStockphoto)

From ABC News (Australia):

In a world where rich countries look for cheap labour in poor ones, bioethicists, lawyers and women's health advocates are raising questions about the outsourcing of baby-making - especially to countries like India.

Australian sociologist Associate Professor Catherine Waldby of the University of Sydney told a recent conference in Brisbane that India was undercutting the US as a preferred source of surrogate mothers for couples from developed countries.

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30,000 Flee Philippine volcano

Lava flows down the slopes of the Mayon volcano in the Philippines

From CNN:

(CNN) -- More than 30,000 people have fled their homes ahead of an expected eruption of the Mayon volcano in the central Philippines, the Red Cross said Wednesday.

Philippine authorities have said a large-scale eruption of the 2,464-meter (8,077-foot) peak is imminent, and have begun trying to evacuate about 50,000 people living around the nation's most active volcano.

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Scientists Crack 'Entire Genetic Code' Of Cancer

From BBC:

Scientists have unlocked the entire genetic code of two of the most common cancers - skin and lung - a move they say could revolutionise cancer care.

Not only will the cancer maps pave the way for blood tests to spot tumours far earlier, they will also yield new drug targets, says the Wellcome Trust team.

Scientists around the globe are now working to catalogue all the genes that go wrong in many types of human cancer.

The UK is looking at breast cancer, Japan at liver and India at mouth.

China is studying stomach cancer, and the US is looking at cancers of the brain, ovary and pancreas.

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15% Of Teens 'Sexting' On Cells, Study Says

From San Francisco Chronicle:

About 15 percent of American teenagers have received nude or sexually suggestive photos on their cell phones, and that percentage doubles as teens get older, according to a study released Tuesday about the tech-fueled trend called "sexting."

Boys are as likely as girls to send sexts, while teens who pay for their own cell phone bills are more likely to text salacious shots, according to the study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project of Washington.

The study does show the vast majority of teens aren't sexting, with 4 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds admitting to sexting photos or videos of themselves.

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Who Needs The Grid?

From The Atlantic:

In the boardroom at Bloom Energy, a single picture hangs on the wall: a satellite image of the world at night. Clusters of bright lights mark the industrial centers, and thin white lines trace connecting passageways such as the U.S. Interstate System and the Trans-Siberian Railroad. In between, huge swaths lie in shadow.

Standing almost reverently before the image, K. R. Sridhar, the CEO of Bloom, points to the dark areas—places where electricity isn’t accessible or reliable. “This is my motivation for everything,” he says. To improve the lot of the more than 2 billion people living in those dark areas, he says, you have to get them reliable, affordable energy. And if you don’t want to doom the environment in the process, you have to make that energy very clean.

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Scientists Decode Memory-Forming Brain Cell Conversations

Artist's rendering of neurons. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 16, 2009) — The conversations neurons have as they form and recall memories have been decoded by Medical College of Georgia scientists.

The breakthrough in recognizing in real time the formation and recollection of a memory opens the door to objective, thorough memory studies and eventually better therapies, said Dr. Joe Tsien, neuroscientist and co-director of MCG's Brain & Behavior Discovery Institute. He is corresponding author on the study published Dec. 16 in PLoS ONE.

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Time-Lapse Photos Show Dramatic Erosion of Alaska Coast

A new study indicates part of the northern Alaska coastline is eroding by up to 45 feet annually due to declining sea ice, warming seawater and increased wave activity. Credit: Robert S. Anderson, University of Colorado.

From Live Science:

SAN FRANCISCO — Time-lapse photography of crumbling Alaskan coastlines is helping scientists understand the "triple whammy" of forces eroding the local landscape: declining sea ice, warming ocean waters and more poundings by waves.

The erosion rates from these forces are greater than anything seen along the world's coastlines, with the coast midway between Alaska's Point Barrow and Prudhoe Bay falling into the ocean in the inland direction by up to one-third the length of a football field annually, scientists have found.

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New Underwater Explorers Go Where Scientists Can't

From Popular Mechanics:

Last week, an unmanned robot completed a 3300-mile trek across the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. The 134-pound robot, a glider named the Scarlet Knight, spent months at sea, gathering data on ocean temperature and salinity between the water's surface down to 600 feet below. The Scarlet Knight is just one of many new technologies scientists are turning to in order to research oceans, rivers and lakes—areas that are impractical, and in some cases impossible, for researchers to access themselves. By employing everything from robots to, yes, tadpoles, scientists hope to learn more about how climate change and pollution are affecting the earth's water. Here is some of the newest tech aiding scientists.

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Who Should Be the First Band To Play in Space?

Spandau Ballet

From Popular Science:

This morning an odd story surfaced and began orbiting the Web: Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic signed '80s rock heartthrobs (now aging '80s rock heartthrobs) Spandau Ballet to be the first band to rock out in space. Citing a press release of dubious origin, several blogs and even the UK's Daily Mail reported the story, even naming possible songs the group would play during a five-minute weightless set.

But we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief. The Internet has hoodwinked us once again.

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The Beckoning Silence: Why Half Of The World's Languages Are in Serious Danger Of Dying Out

Language hotspots are areas with extreme linguistic diversity, containing many highly endangered and underdocumented languages

From The Independent:

Of the 6,500 languages spoken in the world, half are expected to die out by the end of this century. Now, one man is trying to keep those voices alive by reigniting local pride in heritage and identity.

High up, perched among the remote hilltops of eastern Nepal, sits a shaman, resting on his haunches in long grass. He is dressed simply, in a dark waistcoat and traditional kurta tunic with a Nepalese cap sitting snugly on his head. To his left and right, two men hold recording devices several feet from his face, listening patiently to his precious words. His tongue elicits sounds alien to all but a few people in the world, unfamiliar even to those who inhabit his country. His eyes flicker with all the intensity of a man reciting for the first time to a western audience his tribe's version of the Book of Genesis, its myth of origins.

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How A Glass Or Two Of Champagne Really Does Lift The Heart

From The Guardian:

Fizz made with black grapes shares benefits of red wine for heart and blood circulation, scientists find.

Scientists are delivering some unexpected cheer this Christmas. They have found that a couple of glasses of champagne a day are good for your heart and blood circulation.

Nor, they believe, are the benefits limited to expensive fizz: cheaper alternatives such as cava and prosecco may offer similar effects.

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From Future Pundit:

10000 to 7600 year old woolly mammoth DNA was found frozen in Alaska tundra. So this begs the obvious question: Is the DNA good enough to sequence and use some day to bring back the woolly mammoth?

The work of U of A Earth and Atmospheric Sciences professor Duane Froese and his colleagues counters an important extinction theory, based on radiocarbon dating of bones and teeth. That analysis concluded that more than half of the large mammals in North America (the 'megafauna') disappeared about 13,000 years ago.

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I, Robot: Buy Your Own Android Double For Christmas

Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro developed his own robot doppelganger in 2007

From The Daily Mail:

Stuck for gift ideas this Christmas? How about an android moulded in the exact likeness of your loved one? Well that is exactly what's on offer at a chain of department stores in Japan.

The mechanical doppelgangers will be on offer at Sogo, Seibu, and Robinson retailers for the princely sum of 20.1million yen or £139,000.

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