Tutankhamun: Now We Know Who The Mummy's Mummy Was

The Viscera Coffin of Tutankhamun, one of four made for the Egyptian king. Getty images

From The Independent:

Secrets of Egyptian boy king's lineage and cause of death unearthed.

His autopsy took some time to complete – more than 3,000 years, in fact – but scientists now believe they know why the Egyptian boy king Tutankhamun died, as well as who his parents and grandmother were.

After conducting an extensive analysis of the ancient pharaoh's DNA, which they gathered from his mummified remains, the researchers concluded that a combination of malaria and bone abnormalities contributed to his premature death at the age of 19 in 1324 BC.

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British Scientists Discover 'Secret To Ageing' Bringing New Hope To Old-Age Sufferers

Scientists said the discovery would unlikely provide an elixir of eternal life in the near future.

From The Telegraph:

The secret to ageing appears to have been solved by British scientists, bringing new hope to sufferers of old age-related illnesses such as heart disease.

The international team of researchers based Newcastle University have reportedly unlocked the secret as to how and why living cells grow old by discovering the biochemical pathway involved in ageing.

The study, together with German experts from the University of Ulm, could lead to a “much better chance of making a successful attack on age-related diseases”.

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Only In Vegas: The Magic Carpets Designed To Keep You Awake And Gambling

The outrageous carpets do nothing to distract gamblers at Las Vegas's most popular casinos

From The Daily Mail:

Las Vegas is well-known for being the city that never sleeps as gamblers are encouraged to spend their money around the clock.

Now a new set of photographs has revealed that even the garish carpets that line the hotels and casinos have an important part to play.

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Google Buzz 'Breaks Privacy Laws' Says Watchdog

From The BBC:

A leading privacy group has urged US regulators to investigate Google's new social networking service Buzz, one week after its launch.

The Electronic Privacy Information Centre (Epic) has made its complaint to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

It says that Buzz - which is part of Google's Gmail service - is "deceptive" and breaks consumer protection law.

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Verizon Users To Get Skype In Late March

From PC World:

Verizon Wireless has joined forces with Skype, and its subscribers will be able to start making calls using Skype on nine selected smartphones in late March, the operator said on Tuesday.

The two companies have built a new always-on application called Skype Mobile. The client will be available to owners of the following RIM (Research in Motion) phones: BlackBerry Storm, Storm 2, Curve 8330, Curve 8530, 8830 World Edition and the Tour 9630. It will also be available on the Motorola Droid, the HTC Droid Eris and the Motorola Devour.

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"Cyber ShockWave": The U.S. Fails In Cyberwar Game

West Wing Situation Room Planning for a hopefully better tomorrow Christopher Morris/White House Museum

U.S. Wargamers Wrap Up Massive Cyberattack Drill: "We Are Not Prepared" -- Popular Science

Washington insiders recently sweated out a real-time war game where a cyberattack crippled cell phone service, Internet and even electrical grids across the U.S. The unscripted, dynamic simulation allowed former White House officials and the Bipartisan Policy Center to study the problems that might arise during a real cyberattack emergency, according to Aviation Week's Ares Defense Blog.

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More News On The Recent Cyberattack Drill

War game reveals U.S. lacks cyber-crisis skills -- Washington Post
Cyberattack Drill Shows U.S. Unprepared -- Information Week
U.S. Government Defends Against Simulated Cyberattack on U.S. Targets -- Daily Tech
Washington Group Tests Security in ‘Cyber ShockWave’ -- Wall Street Journal
War game simulates cyberattack -- Politico
Cyber ShockWave cripples computers nationwide (sorta) -- Christian Science Monitor
Security Experts Wrestle With Cyberattack Scenario -- PC World
U.S. Isn’t Prepared for Massive Cyber Attack, Ex-Officials Say -- Business Week
US Cybersecurity Hypothetically Pathetic -- Tech News World
Simulated Cyberwar Hits DC -- Ares/Aviation Week
Unconstrained Cyberspace Domain -- Defense Tech
3 Ways Cyber Warriors Could Cripple the U.S. -- Atlantic Wire
Is The U.S. Ready For A Cyberwar? -- NPR
In a doomsday cyber attack scenario, answers are unsettling -- L.A. Times

A Ping-Pong-Playing Terminator

Match Point: Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters

From Popular Science:

Meet TOPIO 3.0, the ping-pong-playing robot. Made by Vietnam’s first-ever robotics firm, TOSY, the bipedal humanoid uses two 200-fps cameras to detect the ball as it leaves the opponent’s paddle.

TOPIO’s brain—processors and an artificial neural network—analyzes the ball’s path to choose the best return. Last fall, TOPIO 3.0 debuted at the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo.

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Concrete Phase Of Runway Begins At Spaceport America

From Space Daily:

The first batch of concrete was poured Thursday, February 11, marking the start of the final concrete finish phase of the runway construction at Spaceport America, the world's first purposebuilt commercial spaceport. The runway project, which began in August 2009, is expected to be completed this summer, according to the New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA).

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Particle May Be Leading Candidate For Mysterious Dark Matter

Closeup of a CDMS detector, made of crystal germanium.
(Credit: DOE/Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 16, 2010) — Physicists may have glimpsed a particle that is a leading candidate for mysterious dark matter but say conclusive evidence remains elusive.

A 9-year search from a unique observatory in an old iron mine 2,000 feet underground has yielded two possible detections of weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. But physicists, who include two University of Florida researchers, say there is about a one in four chance that the detections were merely background noise -- meaning that a worldwide hunt involving at least two dozen different observatories and hundreds of scientists will continue.

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Why People Fake Illness

From Live Science:

In 2008, a Baltimore woman named Dina Leone shared shocking news with her friends and family: she had been diagnosed with stomach cancer. She wrote blogs and Facebook notes, updating everyone on her treatment and progress. The 37-year-old mother of two received more than an outpouring of support and get-well cards; she also got money to help pay for her treatments and fulfill her dying wishes.

It was all very tragic – and it was also a hoax. Police investigated her claims and soon her story unraveled when the hospitals she claimed to have visited had no record of her. Leone eventually admitted that she had pretended to be sick for over three years. She was recently indicted on charges of theft and conspiracy.

But why would someone lie about having cancer?

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Digital Handcuffs For Apple Ebooks?

From L.A. Times:

Apple's old digital rights management software (DRM), FairPlay, is slated to make a comeback with the e-books it will be selling on its iBook Store. While music users have been free of these "digital handcuffs" for the last year, Alex Pham reports that readers will not be.

When Apple launches its iBook store to sell titles for its new iPad device in March, many of its titles are expected to come with a set of handsome digital locks designed to deter piracy....

Next month, Apple will be dusting off those digital cuffs for books, according to sources in the publishing industry.

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Adam Aims To Take Bite Out Of Apple In iPad War

From Times Online:

It has already brought the world a £1,400 car, now India is set to release an “iPad for the masses” — a new tablet computer that technology experts say could mount a challenge to Apple’s latest gadget.

The new device, called the Adam, has been designed by Notion Ink, a start-up based in the technology hub of Hyderabad. The company was founded by three 24-year-old graduates from India’s elite technical universities who have relied on family and friends for seed funding.

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How The MP3 Became A Combat Weapon

From The Guardian:

Aditya Chakrabortty on the platoons' playlists on the Iraq frontline.

CJ Grisham and his friends used to love Eminem – especially his song, Go To Sleep. "We'd blare that and we'd all scream the lyrics." An all-American ritual – except that Grisham was a ­sergeant in the US offensive on ­Fallujah, and Eminem was his anthem for ­facing the Iraqis. As he puts it: "I'm going to have to shoot at someone today, so might as well get pumped up for it." And so his platoon would shriek along: "Go to sleep, bitch/Die, motherfucker, die/Time's up, bitch, close your eyes."

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Parents To Blame For Women 'Unlucky In Love', Claim Scientists

The study could explain why some women such as Jennifer Aniston,
remain unlucky in love. Photo: Reuters

From The Telegraph:

The reason why some women remain without a long-term boyfriend appears to have been solved by Australian scientists.

Researchers from the University of Western Australia reportedly claim some of the secrets of attraction appear to be hidden in certain immune system genes inherited from our parents.

They found that a woman's appearance or sweat contains clues to the genetic make-up of her immune system.

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Mystery Of The Giant Honeycomb Built In A Wood By Thousands Of Bees In Freezing February

Sweet success: The incredible honeycomb built by bees despite the
freezing weather at Holly Hill, Fareham, Hampshire

From The Daily Mail:

If you go down to these woods today you are sure of a sweet surprise - bees swarming in sub-zero temperatures around a giant honeycomb.

Even Sir David Attenborough would be stumped by the discovery as thousands of bees have constructed the comb in an oak tree at Holly Hill Country Park, Fareham, Hants.

The hardy workers have created the giant two-foot long structure and have been spotted by walkers and winter wildlife spotters more used to seeing deer and badgers at this time of year.

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Nasa Rides 'Bucking Bronco' To Mars

From The BBC:

It weighs almost a tonne, has cost more than $2bn and, in 2013, it will be lowered on to the surface of Mars with a landing system that has never been tried before.

The Mars Science Laboratory will "revolutionise investigations in science on other planets", says Doug McCuistion, director of Nasa's Mars exploration programme.

It will, he says, lay the foundations for future missions that will eventually bring pieces of the Red Planet back home to Earth.

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US Networks And Power Grid Under (Mock) Cyber-Attack

Under attack (Image: James Schnepf / Getty)

From New Scientist:

Unknown hackers have taken out US cellphone networks in an ongoing cyber-attack that will soon knock out parts of the nation's electricity grid – say the officials who helped plan today's mock assault on the nation's defences.

The 3-hour event began at 10 am EST (3 pm GMT) and will quickly escalate from cellphone networks to attack the US power supply by taking advantage of vulnerabilities in smart grid technologies, says Matthew Stern, head of cyber accounts for defence contractor General Dynamics.

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Are Criminals Born Bad?

From Times Online:

The field of neurocriminology is reviving some controversial ideas. Can criminal urges really be blamed on the brain?

We are used to hearing talk of “the criminal mind”. In future we can expect to hear more about “the criminal brain”. Recent scientific research suggests that criminality may be a trait tha t some people are born with or acquire very early in life. It’s an unsettling thought: examine the prefrontal cortex in the brain of a gurgling infant and you may see the signs of a potential future murderer.

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New Supercomputer Uses Water-Cooled Technology To Save Energy

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 16, 2010) — Nanyang Technological University (NTU) February 11 opens its much-anticipated High Performance Computing (HPC) Centre to support the university's growing international research profile and capacity, especially in the area of sustainability.

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Happiest States: Hawaii Moves Into First Place

From Live Science:

If you needed an extra twist of the arm to set off on a Hawaii vacation, here it is: The big-wave state was the happiest place to live in 2009, according to a newly released national survey.

Topping the well-being list among all 50 states, Hawaii pulled ahead of the 2008 leader Utah. But Utah and its neighbors still have plenty to smile about. Nine of the top 10 well-being states reside in the Midwest and the West. The south didn't fare so well, taking seven of the 11 lowest well-being spots on the list.

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