Apple Introduces The iPad Tablet

Apple’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, introduced the iPad on Wednesday in San Francisco. Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Apple Reveals The iPad Tablet -- New York Times

After months of wild speculation, Steven P. Jobs has finally given Apple fans exactly what they have been asking for — a new iPhone-like tablet computer called the iPad starting at $499."We want to kick off 2010 by introducing a magical and revolutionary product today,” said Mr. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive.

Some models of the product will be available in 60 days, he said.

Mr. Jobs appeared energized but gaunt as he unveiled the iPad at a press event in San Francisco on Wednesday.

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More News On The iPad Tablet

A Closer Look at Apple’s New Tablet, the iPad -- Gadget Lab
Apple Tablet Scorecard -- PC World
Apple Launches iPad Tablet, iBooks Bookstore -- PC Magazine
Apple reveals multi-touch 'iPad' tablet device starting at $499 -- Apple Insider
Meet the iPad: Apple CEO Steve Jobs debuts tablet computer -- New York Daily News
Summary: Apple puts an end to tablet rumors with iPad -- MacWorld
Apple announces iPad tablet computer -- 'far better at some key tasks' -- L.A. Times
Apple's iPad Plays Games, Surprise! -- PC World
Apple unveils the 'magical' iPad -- CNN
Apple's Steve Jobs unveils the iPad -- Washington Post
Should the Apple iPad be considered a computer? -- CNET News
Apple tablet iRoundup: The good, the bad, the ugly -- CNET News
No Second Coming: Apple’s iPad Just a Big iPod Touch -- PC World

Scientists Return To Haiti To Assess Possibility Of Another Major Quake

In a pre-earthquake photo, a GPS receiver and antenna sit atop a roof in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (Credit: Purdue University/Eric Calais)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Jan. 27, 2010) — A team funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) is returning to Haiti this week to investigate the cause of the January 12, magnitude 7 earthquake there.

The geologists will collect crucial data to assess whether the quake could trigger another major event to the east or west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital.

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Altruistic Chimpanzees Adopt Orphans

The adult male chimpanzee Freddy carries his adopted son Victor on his back. Credit: Tobias Deschner, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

From Live Science:

Chimpanzees can be altruistic just like humans, according to a new study that found 18 cases of orphaned chimps being adopted in the wild.

The kind-hearted chimp parents were discovered in the Taï forest in the West African country Ivory Coast. The adoptive caregivers, both male and female, devoted large amounts of time and effort to protecting their young charges, without any obvious gain to themselves.

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Mysterious Band Of Particles Holds Clues To Solar System's Future

IBEX spacecraft's all-sky map reveals a bright ribbon of particles. Credit: NASA

From Cosmos:

HUNTSVILLE, USA: The ribbon of particles at the edge of the Solar System "shocked" NASA researchers when it was discovered last year. Now they say it is a reflection off a strong galactic magnetic field, and holds the clues to the future of the Solar System.

In October last year, NASA's IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) spacecraft made the first all-sky maps of the heliosphere - the bubble of magnetism that springs from the Sun and surrounds our Solar System.

The result was a map bisected by a bright, winding ribbon of unknown origin. At the time, NASA researchers called it a "shocking result" and puzzled over its origin.

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Navy Pledges Green Strike Group By 2012

The Navy is Going Green The Navy will demonstrate a Green Strike Group, like the George Washington Carrier Strike Group pictured here, by 2012; the group will run on biofuels and nuclear power rather than fossil fuels.

From Popular Science:

Militaries have a tough, often messy job to do, and as such taking steps to polish their green credentials generally isn’t a high priority. But the potential cost savings – not to mention the tactical advantages – of going green are not lost on U.S. Armed Forces’ top brass. The Army has pursued “zero footprint” base camps, and the Air Force is looking into a variety of alternative propellants that could be turned into jet fuel. Now the Navy is going green, signing a memorandum of understanding with the USDA to demo a Green Strike Group of biofuel- and nuclear-powered vessels by 2012.

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My Comment: Political correctness running amok .... but I will concede that the search for alternative fuels and energy is a valid one, and one that may produce huge savings in the future (maybe).

Obama Aims To Ax Moon Mission

From Orlando Sentinel:

NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there — that is, if President Barack Obama gets his way.

When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the Ares V cargo rocket that was to launch the fuel and supplies needed to take humans back to the moon.

There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no Constellation program at all.

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Science Chief John Beddington Calls For Honesty On Climate Change

The IPCC's 2007 report that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 has exposed a wider problem with the way that some evidence was presented

From Times Online:

The impact of global warming has been exaggerated by some scientists and there is an urgent need for more honest disclosure of the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change, according to the Government’s chief scientific adviser.

John Beddington was speaking to The Times in the wake of an admission by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that it grossly overstated the rate at which Himalayan glaciers were receding.

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Sun May Soon Send Magnetic Storms Toward Earth

From US News And World Report/AP:

BOULDER, Colo.—The sun may finally be awakening from its longest quiet period in about a century and powering up to solar maximum, when it could fling disruptive electromagnetic storms toward Earth.
Click here to find out more!

But once the sun does ramp up, it could be a relatively quiet solar maximum, with a below-average number of eruptions, scientists say.

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We Will Find 'Twins Of Earth' This Year, Says Astronomer Michel Mayor

From Times Online:

Scientists will have detected the first truly Earth-like planet outside the solar system by the end of the year, one of the world’s leading astronomers predicted yesterday.

Professor Michel Mayor, of Geneva University, who led the team that discovered the first extrasolar planet (or exoplanet) in 1995, said he was confident that a planet of a similar size and composition to Earth would be found in the near future.

Addressing a Royal Society conference to mark the 50th anniversary of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) programme, he said: “The search for twins of Earth is motivated by the ultimate prospect of finding sites with favourable conditions for the development of life. We’ve entered a new phase in this search.”

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The Face Of First Contact: What Aliens Look Like

Just one possibility (Image: c.20thC.Fox/Everett/Rex Features)

From New Scientist:

TENTACLED monsters, pale skinny humanoids, shimmery beings of pure energy... When it comes to the question of what alien life forms might look like, we are free to let our imagination roam. The science-in-waiting of extraterrestrial anatomy has yet to acquire its first piece of data, so nobody knows what features we will behold if and when humans and aliens come face-to-face. Or face to squirmy something.

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Ambassador Or Slave? East Asian Skeleton Discovered In Vagnari Roman Cemetery

Researchers announced that the skeleton of a man, seen here, has DNA that indicates an East Asian ancestry. Sadly he may have been a slave. His sole surviving grave good, a single pot, can be seen on the far left. A person was buried on top of him and appears to have been given more grave goods. Photo courtesy Professor Tracy Prowse.

From The Independent:

A team of researchers announced a surprising discovery during a scholarly presentation in Toronto last Friday. The research team, based at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, has been helping to excavate an ancient Roman cemetery at the site of Vagnari in southern Italy. Led by Professor Tracy Prowse, they’ve been analyzing the skeletons found there by performing DNA and oxygen isotope tests.

The surprise is that the DNA tests show that one of the skeletons, a man, has an East Asian ancestry – on his mother’s side. This appears to be the first time that a skeleton with an East Asian ancestry has been discovered in the Roman Empire.

However, it seems like this contact between east and west did not go well.

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Everybody Laughs, Everybody Cries: Researchers Identify Universal Emotions

Laughter is a universal language, according to new research. The study suggests that basic emotions such as amusement, anger, fear and sadness are shared by all humans. (Credit: iStockphoto/Eduard Härkönen)

From Live Science:

Science Daily (Jan. 26, 2010) — Here's a piece of research that might leave you tickled: laughter is a universal language, according to new research. The study, conducted with people from Britain and Namibia, suggests that basic emotions such as amusement, anger, fear and sadness are shared by all humans.

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Seniors Have Rewarding Sex Lives

From Live Science:

Senior citizens often have rewarding sex lives, according to new research aimed at revealing the nuances of sexuality in the elderly.

The findings from a set of studies showed that older men between the ages of 57 and 85 are more likely than older women to be sexually active and open. The intimacy of sex, however, was found to be important to both men and women across all ages.

And just as in younger adults, healthy sex means healthy senior citizens.

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Satellite TV 'Making Humans Invisible To Aliens On Other Planets'

The digital age is effectively gagging the Earth by cutting the transmission of TV and radio signals into space Photo: REX

From The Telegraph:

Satellite television and the digital revolution is making humanity more and more invisible to inquisitive aliens on other planets, the world's leading ET hunter has said.

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 extraterrestrial intelligence by Earthly scientists harder, Dr Frank Drake believes.

Dr Drake, who founded the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) organisation in the US 50 years ago, said the digital age was effectively gagging the Earth by cutting the transmission of TV and radio signals into space.

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Browser Usage Over The Past 7 Years

The following is an awesome graphic of browser usage over the last 7 years. The link is here.

Pentagon Tests A Global Internet Routing System Via Satellite

Atlas Launch Cisco's space Internet router launched aboard an Atlas 5 rocket on November 23, 2009. ULA/Pat Corkery

From Popular Science:

Communication satellites have traditionally acted as transfer points for data beamed up from the ground. But the first commercial satellite with its own Internet router could eliminate the usual satellite-relay transfer lag and more flexibly handle voice, video and data communications for U.S. and NATO military forces anywhere around the world. The U.S. Department of Defense plans to kick off a three-month demo of the space technology this week, according to Aviation Week's Ares Defense Blog.

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My Comment: With the growth of UAV and other robotic systems/platforms continuing at a rapid rate, having the proper (and secure) communication platforms will become even more essential in the years to come. I can only presume that this "space internet router" is just one more vital piece of technology to make all of this work.

Is This The iSlate? 'Pictures Of New Tablet' Surface Online As Apple Frenzy Hits Fever Pitch

Could this be a picture of Apple's hugely anticipated iSlate?
Blogger Dustin Curtis' idea of what the device will look like

From The Daily Mail:

Apple is expected to launch its next generation gadget - an iSlate entertainment device - in San Francisco tomorrow.

But as frenzy surrounding the new device, dubbed the 'Jesus tablet', hits fever pitch, it seems some fans cannot wait that long.

Several alleged pictures of the gadget have surfaced online in anticipation of Apple's sleek new design as speculation continues to grow.

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Facebook Users Told To Beware Fresh Wave Of Spam And Phishing Attacks

From Times Online:

A tidal wave of spam has been predicted this year as cyber criminals target social networks such as Facebook.

The networking computer company Cisco estimated that worldwide spam volumes this year could rise by 30 to 40 per cent compared with 2009. Spammers already send out up to 100 million junk e-mails a day and, although the vast majority are never opened, enough people click on the links to make spam a multimillion-dollar industry.

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Internet Backbone Breaks The 100-Gigabit Barrier

Same fibre network, more traffic (Image: Fancy/Alamy)

From New Scientist:

THERE are few facets of society that have remained untouched by the internet. From business communication to leisure activity, the net has transformed the way we behave.

Yet at its heart the internet has stagnated. As a slew of bandwidth-hungry services come on-stream, the fibre-optic backbone that forms its trunk routes are at risk of becoming overwhelmed by too much data. It's due for an upgrade.

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Was The Threat of H1N1 Flu Exaggerated?

Win McNamee / Getty

From Time Magazine:

By the summer of 2009, shortly after the H1N1 flu pandemic had first emerged, there was a waiting list for the first several million doses of the forthcoming new flu vaccine. At the head of the line, naturally, were the world's richest nations. "Again we see the advantage of affluence," said Margaret Chan, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), at a news conference on July 14. "Again we see access denied by an inability to pay." Describing H1N1 as "entirely new and highly contagious," Chan scolded rich countries at the time for hoarding the "lion's share" of the global H1N1-vaccine supply.

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