Facebook And Twitter Compete For Olympic Glory

From New York Times:

Each Olympics brings one or two novel new events. At the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, which start in Vancouver on Friday, there is Ski Cross, in which four skiers plunge down a mountain at the same time.

Then there is an unofficial competition that we’ll call the Social Media Slalom.

That is the race between the Web’s two pre-eminent social media companies, Facebook and Twitter, to establish themselves as the most visible and viable online option for fans that want to connect directly to athletes and get the latest updates from the competition without the filter of big media.

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Evolution On The March

From Philadelphia Inquirer:

New DNA findings show that human genetic mutations are more recent, more rapid than once thought.

Conventional wisdom holds that if you could bring back someone from 40,000 years ago, he or she would blend perfectly well with today's population.

After all, the fossils show that our ancestors were "anatomically modern" by 100,000 years ago, and by 40,000 B.C., they were creating complex tools and art.

It was easy to assume our species hadn't evolved much since then.

Now molecular biology is overturning that assumption.

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YouTube Adding Parental Controls

Watch CBS News Videos Online

From CBS News:

Giving Them Say Over What Kids See; Responding to Criticism that Kids Were Accessing Too Many Inappropriate Videos.

CBS) YouTube has coming under fire from parents who think some of the content on the popular Web site is unsuitable for their kids.

So, CBS News correspondent Kelly Wallace reports exclusively, starting today, YouTube is adding parental controls, enabling parents to block kids from viewing many videos.

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Home Computers Around The World Unite To Map The Milky Way

In the constellation Ophiucus resides NGC 6384, a spiral galaxy with a central bar structure and a possible central ring. Because NGC 6384 is nearly in line with the plane of our galaxy, all the stars in the image are foreground stars in our Milky Way. (Credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 11, 2010) — At this very moment, tens of thousands of home computers around the world are quietly working together to solve the largest and most basic mysteries of our galaxy.

Enthusiastic and inquisitive volunteers from Africa to Australia are donating the computing power of everything from decade-old desktops to sleek new netbooks to help computer scientists and astronomers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute map the shape of our Milky Way galaxy. Now, just this month, the collected computing power of these humble home computers has surpassed one petaflop, a computing speed that surpasses the world's second fastest supercomputer.

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Scientists Freeze Water With Heat

From Live Science:

Imagine water freezing solid even as it's heating up. Such are the bizarre tricks scientists now find water is capable of.

Popular belief contends that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). Surprisingly, if water lies in a smooth bottle and is free of any dust, it can stay liquid down to minus 40 degrees F (minus 40 degrees C) in what's called "supercooled" form. The dust and rough surfaces that water is normally found in contact with in nature can serve as the kernels around which ice crystals form.

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Yahoo Says, Don’t Count Us Out On Search

From Epicenter:

Yahoo is fighting to retain its reputation as a tech leader, after years of being adrift halfway between being a media company and a tech company, and having recently laid off engineers, sold off products and decided to outsource its search backend to Microsoft.

But Yahoo called a roomful of tech reporters to its headquarters in Sunnyvale to say that it’s still fighting.

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Nobel Foundation: Why We Said No To Reform -- A Commentary

The Nobel Foundation responds to New Scientist's call for change
(Image: Oliver Morin/AFP/Getty Images)

From The New Scientist:

LAST year, a group of 10 scientists brought together by New Scientist wrote an open letter to the Nobel Foundation calling for an overhaul of the Nobel prizes. The group suggested that to keep the Nobels relevant, the foundation should introduce prizes for the environment and public health, and open them to institutions as well as individuals. It also suggested reforming the existing physiology or medicine prize to recognise contributions from across the life sciences, especially neuroscience and genetics.

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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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