Boeing's Biggest Bird Takes To The Skies

(Photograph by Jeremy Lindgren)

From Popular Mechanics:

The largest commercial aircraft ever built in the United States, the Boeing 747-8, took off on its maiden flight Monday afternoon, marking an important step forward for the manufacturer's iconic—but aging—747 family of airliners. After lifting off from Boeing's factory at Paine Field in Everett, Wash., Boeing Flight 501 Heavy flew loops around northwestern Washington for a few hours of tests before returning to Everett.

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Are Robot Scientists The Future Of Laboratory Research?

Eve, at Work in the Lab Automated Experimentation

From Popular Science:

There was a time when science produced robots, but a paper published recently in the Automated Experimentation Journal suggests that in the future robots will autonomously produce science. It's not just a matter of cheap labor or taking menial tasks off the hands of researchers; the authors argue that science needs to be uniform and formalized, and AI robot scientists could help us get to that point by developing their own hypotheses and carrying out experiments with minimal human input.

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A Menu For Feeding 9 Billion

From New York Times:

Science Magazine has removed the pay wall from “Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People.” The paper concludes, as many have before, that keeping up with humanity’s needs as numbers and appetites crest toward mid-century poses big challenges. But it expresses optimism that a sustained focus on efficiency, technology and policy innovations can do the trick. (The images above, from the paper, show how investments in water storage and other measures helped restore vegetation in a dry region in Niger.) Here’s the summary:

Continuing population and consumption growth will mean that the global demand for food will increase for at least another 40 years. Growing competition for land, water, and energy, in addition to the overexploitation of fisheries, will affect our ability to produce food, as will the urgent requirement to reduce the impact of the food system on the environment. The effects of climate change are a further threat. But the world can produce more food and can ensure that it is used more efficiently and equitably. A multifaceted and linked global strategy is needed to ensure sustainable and equitable food security, different components of which are explored here.

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It's Google's World, We Just Live In It

From Salon:

It's fun to trash the search-monster's Buzz, but there's a method to its social networking smart-phone madness.

Is this what world domination looks like? On Wednesday, Google announced it was building an ultrafast, one-gigabit-per-second broadband network designed to showcase "innovative" Internet applications. On Tuesday, Google launched Google Buzz, integrating social networking functions into Gmail. Last month, Google debuted its Nexus One smart phone.

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Google Takes On The Telecoms

From The Wall Street Journal:

Google's decision to build a gigabit-a-second broadband network serving between 50,000 and 500,000 people predictably won plaudits from the Federal Communications Commission and public interest groups. But if Google truly wants to help speed the development of universal high-speed Internet access, as it says, it will need to do much more.

After all, there isn't a huge technical challenge building a fast network. Verizon Communications already is operating one that runs at 2.5 gigabits a second, offering television, Internet and phone. The maximum Internet speed it offers is 50 megabytes per second, but it easily can turn that up. It is spending $23 billion over several years to roll out the network to pass 18 million homes in largely suburban and urban areas.

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Facebook Bans UK Inmates After Taunts

From CBS News:

Prisoners Were Using the Site to Make Threats and Even Plan Future Crimes.

(AP) The criminals are behind bars but their victims are still feeling their reach - through the Internet.

The British government said Thursday that Facebook had removed the profiles of 30 U.K. inmates at its request after several incidents in which prisoners reportedly used the social networking site to organize crime or taunt others.

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How Roman Gladiators Died

Death Of A Gladiator -- Mind Hacks

Roman gladiators took part in one of the most brutal sports in history, many dying by traumatic brain injury during their matches. A medical study published in Forensic Science International examined the skulls of deceased fighters, discovered in a gladiator graveyard from Turkey, and reveals exactly how they died and even what weapons delivered the fatal brain injury.

The graveyard was discovered by archaeologists in 1993 but this study is the result of applying modern forensic medicine, which more typically attempts to discover the cause of death by looking at human remains after a crime, to the ancient bones.

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Climate 'Tipping Points' May Arrive Without Warning, Says Top Forecaster

Icebergs breaking off from the Dawes Glacier in the Endicott Arm.
(Credit: iStockphoto/Joseph Gareri)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 10, 2010) — A new University of California, Davis, study by a top ecological forecaster says it is harder than experts thought to predict when sudden shifts in Earth's natural systems will occur -- a worrisome finding for scientists trying to identify the tipping points that could push climate change into an irreparable global disaster.

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Facebook Data Reveals Secrets Of American Culture

A breakdown of American Facebook communities according to a recent analysis by an ex-Apple engineer. Credit: Pete Warden

From Live Science:

Facebook users in the American West appear to move around a lot, and often have friends throughout the country, while users from Minnesota to Manhattan have connections much closer to home.

And in areas in and around Texas, on the edge of what’s generally thought of as the Bible Belt, the Dallas Cowboys rank higher overall on users’ fan pages than God.

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U.S. Government Wants To Track Its Citizens Through Their Cell Phones

Feds Push For Tracking Cell Phones -- CNET

Two years ago, when the FBI was stymied by a band of armed robbers known as the "Scarecrow Bandits" that had robbed more than 20 Texas banks, it came up with a novel method of locating the thieves.

FBI agents obtained logs from mobile phone companies corresponding to what their cellular towers had recorded at the time of a dozen different bank robberies in the Dallas area. The voluminous records showed that two phones had made calls around the time of all 12 heists, and that those phones belonged to men named Tony Hewitt and Corey Duffey. A jury eventually convicted the duo of multiple bank robbery and weapons charges.

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My Comment: Only CNET is carrying this story (Update: Drudge is also carrying this story) on what should be a warning sign on where the US Government wants to go in conducting surveillance on its citizens. Hmmm .... so much for our privacy rights .... and from a Liberal President.

Saturn’s Most Habitable Moon Offers Ice, Water, Killer Views

From Wired Science:

Enceladus has to be one of the most intriguing objects in the solar system. It’s definitely our favorite of Saturn’s 62 moons here at Wired Science, and it’s among the most likely places to find the necessary ingredients for extraterrestrial life in the solar system.

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Somali Pirates Hold Science To Ransom

Scourge of the Indian Ocean (Image: Mohamed Dahir/AFP/Getty Images)

From New Scientist:

SOMALI pirates terrorising the Indian Ocean are a hazard to more than shipping and tourists. They are also killing important scientific research and may be indirectly damaging the ocean's ecosystem.

Fishing boats in the Indian Ocean routinely carry scientists who gather data about fish stocks and threatened species while ensuring that boats comply with fishing rules. The piracy threat has put a stop to that. "We can't monitor and we can't do experiments because of the pirates," says Laurent Dagorn of France's Research Institute for Development (IRD).

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5 Things You Need To Know About Google Buzz

From Popular Mechanics:

There are two ways to launch a social networking site. The first way: Build one from scratch, and spend years and millions of dollars going up against established giants. The second: Add a couple of key features that turn an already ubiquitous service into a social networking site. With Tuesday's launch of Google Buzz, the search giant has picked the latter path.

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On DARPA's List: A Real-Time, 3-D Picture Of The Earth Beneath Our Feet

Peering Inside the Earth DARPA's "Transparent Earth" would give both the military and civil authorities a real-time, 3-D view of processes in the Earth's crust, possibly allowing us to predict natural disasters like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. NASA

From Popular Science:

DARPA wants to know what's happening in the skies overhead and seeks full situational awareness on the ground, so we suppose it's no surprise that now it wants full, real-time surveillance of what's happening beneath the surface. As part of the agency's fiscal 2011 budget, $4 million will go toward creating a system of sensors and algorithms that will create real-time 3-D maps displaying "the physical, chemical, and dynamic properties of the earth down to 5 km depth, including natural or man-made structures at militarily- relevant spatial scales."

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Anticipating Unrest, Iran Disrupts Internet Communications

Anticipating Protests, Iran Disrupts Internet Communications -- New York Times

In an effort to disrupt communications and head off huge opposition demonstrations planned for Thursday, the Iranian authorities on Wednesday drastically slowed Internet service in Iran and shut down text messaging services, and an official said that Gmail, the Google e-mail service, would be blocked.

It was not immediately clear if Gmail would be blocked permanently, but users inside Iran said that because of the extremely slow speed of Internet service, they had been unable to open Gmail or the Yahoo e-mail service for the last week.

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Update: Iran to Suspend Google's Email -- Wall Street Journal

My Comment:The message, videos, and the news will still get out.

Another Blizzard: What Happened To Global Warming?

From Time Magazine:

As the blizzard-bound residents of the mid-Atlantic region get ready to dig themselves out of the third major storm of the season, they may stop to wonder two things: Why haven't we bothered to invest in a snow blower, and what happened to climate change? After all, it stands to reason that if the world is getting warmer — and the past decade was the hottest on record — major snowstorms should become a thing of the past, like PalmPilots and majority rule in the Senate. Certainly that's what the Virginia state Republican Party thinks: the GOP aired an ad last weekend that attacked two Democratic members of Congress for supporting the 2009 carbon-cap-and-trade bill, using the recent storms to cast doubt on global warming.

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Dramatic Images Of World Trade Centre Collapse On 9/11 Released For First Time

Click Image To Enlarge
The moment one of the World Trade Centre towers begins to crumble in New York

From The Daily Mail:

We have seen the Twin Towers collapse hundreds of times on TV. The steel and glass skyscrapers exploding like a bag of flour, the dust and smoke pluming out across Manhattan. But never like this, from above.

Nine years after the defining moment of the 21st century, a stunning set of photographs taken by New York Police helicopters forces us to look afresh at a catastrophe we assumed we knew so well.

You know but cannot see the 2,752 men, women and children who died at the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. None is visible here.

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Thirty-Eight Percent Of World's Surface In Danger Of Desertification

This is the Guadalquivir River as it passes through Seville, one of the areas most at risk of desertification in Spain. (Credit: Nesta Vázquez)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 10, 2010) — Researchers have measured the degradation of the planet's soil using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a scientific methodology that analyses the environmental impact of human activities, and which now for the first time includes indicators on desertification. The results show that 38 percent of the world is made up of arid regions at risk of desertification.

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Why Advertised Broadband Speeds Lag Behind Reality

From Live Science:

Downloading music from the Internet, streaming video or even browsing most websites nowadays requires fast broadband Internet connections such as a digital subscriber line (DSL) or cable. But slower-than-advertised connection speeds caused by growing network congestion and artificial restrictions by some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have left broadband consumers frustrated at times, and for good reason.

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Hacker 'Mudge' Gets DARPA Job

Photo: Peiter "Mudge" Zatko
(Credit: BBN Technologies)

From CNET:

Peiter Zatko--a respected hacker known as "Mudge"--has been tapped to be a program manager at DARPA, where he will be in charge of funding research designed to help give the U.S. government tools needed to protect against cyberattacks, CNET has learned.

Zatko will become a program manager in mid-March within the Strategic Technologies Office at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which is the research and development office for the Department of Defense. His focus will be cybersecurity, he said in an interview with CNET on Tuesday.

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