Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Video: Airborne Laser Tracks and Engages A Missile in Flight
From Popular Science:
Remember the Airborne Laser (ABL), the jumbo-jet-mounted chemical laser weapon designed to knock hostile missiles out of the air in mid-flight? The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has released a video of this futuristic system in action, tracking and engaging a test missile fired from San Nicolas Island off the California coast. While the video might come off just a bit anti-climactic, with no dramatic explosion to cap off the laser blast, it does prove one key thing: the system, at least if the video is to be believed, actually works.
Read more ....
My Comment: I have to assume that the video is accurate (even if it was probably taken under controlled conditions) .... if it was not I am sure that critics of the program would be yelling to anyone who would listen right now.
Having said that, I recall how critics were calling this program "mission impossible" 25 years ago. Hmmmm .... 25 years later and billions spent .... I guess nothing is no longer impossible.
Mozilla Leader Worries About Internet Limits
From Yahoo News/AP:MUNICH, Germany (AP) -- The leader of the Mozilla Project, whose Firefox Web browser now has 350 million users, said Sunday that she is concerned that legal restrictions could limit Internet expansion.
Mitchell Baker said she worried about "the increase in laws that make it difficult to run an open network," especially rules about content.
"You suddenly become liable for anything that gets downloaded, whether it's legal or not," she said. "If you said to a municipality, if you build a road, you have to guarantee nothing illegal happens on it -- that's what's happening on the Internet now. So that's the kind of regulatory disruption that's going to have some long-term consequences."
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Has USA Hit Its Final Frontier In Human Space Exploration?
Gravitating toward the International Space Station: If it continues to get the government's support, which space experts say is likely, that will limit the money needed to send humans to the moon or Mars. NASA via APFrom USA Today:
WASHINGTON — Still hoping for that Jetsons future?
Ruh-roh, as the Jetsons' dog, Astro, might put it.
Just six years ago, President Bush laid out a vision of space exploration that harked back to NASA's halcyon days built on astronauts as explorers. Bush wanted to sling them from low Earth orbit to a base on the moon and then, perhaps, on to a first manned landing on another planet, Mars.
But that was before huge federal deficits arrived, public support failed to show, and unmanned explorers scored successes — namely the Hubble telescope and Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which are still sending back signals years after they were expected to expire.
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Apple ‘Tablets’ Sniffed By Analytics Are More Likely iPhones
From Gadget Lab:
A mobile analytics company has come forward with what it touts as evidence that Apple tablet prototypes are being tested — without offering any solid details suggesting the mystery devices are tablets at all.
Analytics firm Flurry has tracked down 50 devices that it believes are Apple’s expected tablet. The devices’ IPs and GPS data give away they have not left Apple’s Cupertino campus, according to Flurry, which raises the firm’s suspicion that these are prototypes in testing. Flurry goes on to say its app tracking matches the “characteristics of Apple’s rumored tablet device” even though the analytics don’t provide any data about the characteristics of the prototypes.
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Stone Age Surgery Discovered After 7,000-Year-Old Man Found With Expertly Amputated Arm
From The Daily Mail:Evidence of surgery carried out nearly 7,000 year ago has emerged – suggesting our Stone Age ancestors were more medically advanced than first thought.
Early Neolithic surgeons used a sharpened flint to amputate the left forearm of an elderly man, scientists have discovered.
And, more remarkable yet, they ensured the patient was anaesthetised and the limb cut off cleanly while the wound was treated afterwards in sterile conditions.
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Monday, January 25, 2010
Global Warming: 'Cooling' Forests Can Heat Too
Pine forest. The simple formula we've learned in recent years -- forests remove the greenhouse gas CO2 from the atmosphere; therefore forests prevent global warming -- may not be quite as simple as we thought. Forests can directly absorb and retain heat, and, in at least one type of forest, these effects may be strong enough to cancel out a good part of the benefit in lowered CO2. (Credit: iStockphoto/Jeremy Sterk)From Science Daily:
ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2010) — The simple formula we've learned in recent years -- forests remove the greenhouse gas CO2 from the atmosphere; therefore forests prevent global warming -- may not be quite as simple as we thought. Forests can directly absorb and retain heat, and, in at least one type of forest, these effects may be strong enough to cancel out a good part of the benefit in lowered CO2. This is a conclusion of a paper that will be published on January 22, in Science by scientists in the Weizmann Institute's Faculty of Chemistry.
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Good And Bad Angels In Hollywood And The Bible
Polls have indicated that nearly 70 percent of Americans think angels exist.Credit: Screen Gems
From Live Science:
The new film "Legion" is about the final days of mankind, as a group of angels make a last stand in a small diner in New Mexico to protect a woman pregnant with humanity's new savior.
The archangel Michael is played by Paul Bettany, who portrays Charles Darwin in the new film "Creation," also released this Friday. The film poster shows Michael with a hunting knife in one hand and a machine gun in the other. This ain't your grandmother's angel.
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Gates, The Philanthropist, On Lessons Learned (Q&A)
Last year marked Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' first year working full time as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In an interview with CNET, done in conjunction with the release of his annual foundation letter, he shared his insights into his philanthropy work, as well as some highlights of his travels. Gates talks with employees of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle last month. Photo by Courtesy of the Bill & Melinda Gates FoundationFrom CNET News:
SEATTLE--Bill Gates thought that coming up with vaccines would be the hard part and that delivering vaccines would be the easy part.
It turns out they are both hard.
That's one of the lessons that Gates tells CNET he has learned in his new role as full-time philanthropist. In travels to Africa, he saw firsthand the challenges of delivering vaccines, many of which have to be kept cold to be effective and are needed in places with no refrigeration.
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The Intricate Beauty Of The Solar Corona
(Click Image to Enlarge)From Discovery News:
The solar corona is the magnetically dominated atmosphere of the sun, reaching millions of miles into space. Paradoxically, the corona is many times hotter than the solar 'surface' (the photosphere) and solar physicists are currently trying to understand why this is the case.
The photosphere has an average temperature of approximately 6000 degrees Celsius, whereas the corona can be millions of degrees Celsius. This is analogous to the air surrounding a hot light bulb being hotter than the bulb itself; in reality, the air surrounding the bulb is cooler than the bulb's glass surface, and it gets cooler the further you move your hand away.
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Prions 'May Keep Nerves Healthy'
Photo: Removing prion proteins led to a breakdown of the myelin sheath surrounding the nerve.From BBC:
Experiments on mice may help scientists understand the workings of the prion protein linked to brain disease vCJD.
Swiss researchers say there is evidence that prions play a vital role in the maintenance of the sheath surrounding our nerves.
They say it is possible that an absence of prions causes diseases of the peripheral nervous system.
One expert said there was growing evidence that the prion had a number of important roles in the body.
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China Scientists Lead World In Research Growth
From The Financial Times:
China has experienced the strongest growth in scientific research over the past three decades of any country, according to figures compiled for the Financial Times, and the pace shows no sign of slowing.
Jonathan Adams, research evaluation director at Thomson Reuters, said China’s “awe-inspiring” growth had put it in second place to the US – and if it continues on its trajectory it will be the largest producer of scientific knowledge by 2020.
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Climate Change's Latest Storm -- A Commentary
From The Wall Street Journal:
Good news for the Earth, bad news for the IPCC.
It's been a good week for the future of Life as We Know It. First the keepers of the climate-science consensus admitted that the Himalayan glaciers are not on the verge of disappearing, as these columns pointed out last month. Now we've learned that there wasn't much science behind the claim, also trumpeted in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 report, that rising temperatures were leading to more-intense storms and more-expensive natural catastrophes.
This is good news for everyone, except perhaps the IPCC itself.
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The Internet War -- A Commentary
The Internet War -- An Editorial From The Washington Post
THE INTERNET has produced a vast expansion of free speech and access to information around the world. But for China and Russia, it has also become a means for waging a covert war against other nations, including the United States -- a brazen effort to steal secrets and plant malware. For those countries and for a host of other authoritarian regimes, Internet freedom is a threat, to be countered by censorship, the imprisonment of bloggers and domestic spying.
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Update: China Ups the Ante in Internet Row With U.S. -- Wall Street Journal editorial
My Comment: Two must read editorials on how both Russia and China are now using the world wide web to target us.
Are Bing And WolframAlpha Catching Up With Google In Search Engine Battle?
From The Guardian:
Panel hears how Google's competitors are looking at different ways of searching the internet.
The front of the pack isn't always the best place to be. In a panel of search engine representatives at the Munich DLD conference, Google's Ben Gomes was the most reluctant to give anything away. Alsio on the panel were Conrad Alpha, of WolframAlpha, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, the architect of Microsoft Visual Earth, and Ilya Segalovich, of Yandex – Russia's largest search engine.
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The Digital Revolution Is Making Earth Harder To Detect by Inquisitive Aliens, World's Leading ET Hunter Says
Out of reach? E.T. touches his friend Elliot in the film 'E.T The Extra Terrestrial'. Dr Frank Drake believes the digital revolution is making us harder for other life forms to detectFrom The Daily Mail:
Satellite TV and the digital revolution is making humanity more and more invisible to inquisitive aliens on other planets, the world's leading ET hunter said today.
That might be good news for anyone who fears an 'Independence Day' - style invasion by little green men.
But it is also likely to make the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence by Earthly scientists harder, Dr Frank Drake believes.
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More Cyber Attacks From China?
Iraq's Rumaila oil field: A key target of 2008 cyberattacks on US oil and gas companies ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and Marathon was exploration 'bid data' that provides critical details about new energy discoveries. Atef Hassan/ReutersUS Oil Industry Hit By Cyberattacks: Was China Involved? -- Christian Science Monitor
MONITOR EXCLUSIVE: Breaches show how sophisticated industrial espionage is becoming. The big question: Who’s behind them?
At least three US oil companies were the target of a series of previously undisclosed cyberattacks that may have originated in China and that experts say highlight a new level of sophistication in the growing global war of Internet espionage.
The oil and gas industry breaches, the mere existence of which has been a closely guarded secret of oil companies and federal authorities, were focused on one of the crown jewels of the industry: valuable “bid data” detailing the quantity, value, and location of oil discoveries worldwide, sources familiar with the attacks say and documents obtained by the Monitor show.
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More News On China And Cyber Attacks
Google cyberattacks stoke fears of stealth hackers -- Seattle Times/New York Times
Hack Attacks Test Google's Link to China -- CBS News
Chinese Government Denies Involvement In Google Attack -- The Atlantic
Google negotiating ways to keep presence in China -- Washington Post
Google: China Dispute Could Be Resolved in Weeks -- ABC News
Chinese Sites Report Cyber Attacks -- Wall Street Journal
China rights groups hit by cyberattacks: activists -- AFP
Microsoft beefs up security due to China hack -- National Business Review
Internet Explorer 'hit with new set of security flaws' -- The Telegraph
China Hacks Inspire Copycats -- PC World
Cybercriminals use China attacks on Google as lure -- Computer Weekly
The top 10 Chinese cyber attacks (that we know of) -- The Cable/Foreign Policy
What's really at stake in Google vs. China -- Fareed Zakaria, CNN opinion
Stroke's 'Death Signal' Can Be Blocked; Discovery May Aid Drug Development
Dr. Sic Chan is an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. (Credit: UCF/Jacque Brund)From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Jan. 25, 2010) — Biomedical scientists from the University of Central Florida and Louisiana State University have identified a way to block a "cell death signal" that they believe triggers brain damage during strokes.
Strokes, also known as cerebral ischemia, are caused by inadequate blood flow to the brain and are the third-leading cause of death in the United States.
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Breeding Has Made Dogs' Heads Incredibly Diverse
A cocker spaniel mix puppy. Credit: stock.xchngFrom Live Science:
To get a sense of the not-so-subtle ways humans have influenced the course evolution, one wouldn't need to look further than Fido.
A new study reveals that the variety of skull shapes among domestic dogs has become just as diverse as the variety between other mammal species, such as bears, weasels, and seals. In fact some dog breeds’ heads vary in shape by more than the variation between cats and walruses.
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Dino Extinction Brought Birds Back To Earth
Flightless birds owe their success to the demise of the dinosaurs. Credit: WikimediaFrom Cosmos:
SYDNEY: Large, flightless birds such as ostriches and emus, originated in the northern hemisphere, according to an Australian study that suggests they became grounded after dinosaurs went extinct.
Reconstructed migration patterns have raised questions about whether flightless birds could have their evolutionary origins in the planet's north.
Until now, most scientists thought these birds originated in the southern behemoth Gondwanaland, according to the study published in Systematic Biology.
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Rivals Will Vie With Apple For Tablet Spotlight
Intel demonstrates OpenPeak tablet at 2010 CES.(Credit: Intel)
From CNET:
Technology from Intel, Marvell, and Nvidia is powering some intriguing alternatives to the imminent Apple tablet.
News about the Apple tablet, when it emerges, will likely blanket the Internet for some time after the device is announced, obscuring tablet efforts from rivals. Nevertheless, there will be at least a few designs that should warrant some attention. Here are some potential high-profile alternatives:
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