Bloom Energy Promises Cheap, Emissions-Free Power From A Small Box

Bloom Box Can these boxes do away with traditional power plants and the power grid? CBS

From Popular Science:

Google, eBay, FedEx have already started using Bloom Boxes.

A boxy power plant that could one day produce efficient, inexpensive, clean energy in every home might sound like a pipe dream, but it's the very real product of a Silicon Valley startup called Bloom Energy. Twenty large corporations that include Google, FedEx, Walmart and eBay have already purchased and begun testing the Bloom Boxes. 60 Minutes recently got a sneak peek at this possibly game-changing energy device.

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Doctors Urge Choking Warning Labels For Food

The American Academy of Pediatrics says the food industry should avoid shapes and sizes that pose choking risks. Getty Images

From Discovery News:

Although federal law requires choking warning labels on certain toys, no mandate exists for food.

* Choking kills more than 100 U.S. children 14 years or younger each year.
* Food, including candy and gum, is among the leading culprits, along with items like coins and balloons.
* Federal law requires choking warning labels on certain toys, but no mandate exists for food.

When 4-year-old Eric Stavros Adler choked to death on a piece of hot dog, his anguished mother never dreamed that the popular kids' food could be so dangerous.

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Many Ways To Activate Webcams Without School Spy Software

From CNET:

The Webcam spy case in the Lower Merion School District near Philadelphia has raised concern as to whether others with Webcams are vulnerable to remote spying. The school district admitted to activating the Webcams 42 times during a 14-month period, claiming that it did so only to track lost or stolen laptops.

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Healing Touch: The Key To Regenerating Bodies

From New Scientist:

YOU started life as a single cell. Now you are made of many trillions. There are more cells in your body than there are stars in the galaxy. Every day billions of these cells are replaced. And if you hurt yourself, billions more cells spring up to repair broken blood vessels and make new skin, muscle or even bone.

Even more amazing than the staggering number of cells, though, is the fact that, by and large, they all know what to do - whether to become skin or bone and so on. The question is, how?

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Ice Shelves Disappearing On Antarctic Peninsula: Glacier Retreat And Sea Level Rise Are Possible Consequences

This image shows ice-front retreat in part of the southern Antarctic Peninsula from 1947 to 2009. USGS scientists are studying coastal and glacier change along the entire Antarctic coastline. The southern portion of the Antarctic Peninsula is one area studied as part of this project, and is summarized in the USGS report, "Coastal-Change and Glaciological Map of the Palmer Land Area, Antarctica: 1947--2009" (map I--2600--C). (Credit: Image courtesy of U.S. Geological Survey)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 22, 2010) — Ice shelves are retreating in the southern section of the Antarctic Peninsula due to climate change, according to new data. This could result in glacier retreat and sea-level rise if warming continues, threatening coastal communities and low-lying islands worldwide, experts say.

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More Liquor Stores Mean More Violence

From Live Science:

SAN DIEGO – The more bars and liquor stores in an area, the more violence there will be, a new study finds.

Researchers compared crime statistics and listings of liquor licenses in Cincinnati to determine the connection. Convenience stores and carry-out sites that sold alcohol were the most strongly associated with assaults, but bars and restaurants that serve alcohol are also correlated with violence.

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Climate Change Could Be Accelerated By 'Methane Time Bomb'

From The Telegraph:

Climate change could be accelerated dramatically by rising levels of methane in the Earth’s atmosphere, scientists will warn today.

Atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas, which is as much as 60 times more potent than carbon dioxide, appear to have risen significantly for the past three years running, scientists say.

Experts have long feared that vast amounts of the natural gas trapped in the frozen tundra of the Arctic could be unlocked as the permafrost is melted by rising temperatures, triggering a "methane time bomb" that could cause temperatures to soar.

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Stopping Stealthy Downloads

From Technology Review:

A new tool blocks files that try to install without alerting the user.

Researchers at SRI International and Georgia Tech are preparing to release a free tool to stop "drive-by" downloads: Internet attacks in which the mere act of visiting a Web site results in the surreptitious installation of malicious software. The new tool, called BLADE (Block All Drive-By Download Exploits), stops downloads that are initiated without the user's consent.

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An Astronaut Peeks Out from the Space Station's Lovely New 360-Degree Window

Cupola View: Why is this man smiling? Oh right NASA

From Popular Science:

Space shuttle Endeavour has landed safely after installing a new observation deck on the International Space Station. But the Endeavour astronauts didn't leave without first checking out the new view from the cupola window.

Here we get a view of George Zamka, NASA astronaut and STS-130 commander, peeking out from the newly-installed cupola on February 19 while the space shuttle remained docked with the space station. ISS resident Soichi Noguchi has already made good use of the cupola to take pretty Earth Twitpics with his 800mm lens camera.

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Fewer Cyclones, But More Violent

Rainfall could increase by 20 percent around the eye of intense storms, according to a recent study. Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, GSFC, NASA

From Discovery News:

Study calls for increased knowledge of the more extreme yet least understood aspects of climate change.

* Cyclones are known in the Atlantic as hurricanes and in eastern Asia as typhoons.
* Tropical storms are driven by warm seas, which maybe more common as temperatures rise.
* Storms could produce more powerful winds by an increase of between 2 percent and 11 percent.

Tropical cyclones may become less frequent this century but pack a stronger punch as a result of global warming, according to a new paper.

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Olympic timing a high-tech affair

From CNET:

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--Less than a century ago, the timing of downhill skiing required someone at the top and bottom of the run, each with a stopwatch synchronized to the time of day.

Every few skiers, the timer at the top would send down a piece of paper with the start times of the last few skiers and then some math would ensue, eventually resulting in the time of the run being calculated.

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The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough?

Watch CBS News Videos Online

The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough? -- CBS News

60 Minutes: First Customers Says Energy Machine Works And Saves Money.

(CBS) In the world of energy, the Holy Grail is a power source that's inexpensive and clean, with no emissions. Well over 100 start-ups in Silicon Valley are working on it, and one of them, Bloom Energy, is about to make public its invention: a little power plant-in-a-box they want to put literally in your backyard.

You'll generate your own electricity with the box and it'll be wireless. The idea is to one day replace the big power plants and transmission line grid, the way the laptop moved in on the desktop and cell phones supplanted landlines.

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Back To The Drawing Board With Missile-Beating Laser

The Airborne Laser just can’t deliver a beam with enough power
(Image: Jim Shryne/USAF)

From New Scientist:

A laser-toting Boeing 747 blasted two missilesMovie Camera out of the sky earlier this month, but despite this apparent success the Pentagon is going back to the drawing board in its search for an anti-missile laser weapon.

The ABL's problem is that it can't deliver enough power over enough distance to be genuinely useful, so the culmination of a project begun in 1996 and costing an estimated $5 billion will be to downgrade the ABL to a "testbed". It will be handed over by the Missile Defense Agency to the US air force for general research use.

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Uncovering Secrets Of The Sphinx

Carved in place from limestone, the Sphinx is among the world's largest statues.
Sandro Vannini / Corbis

From the Smithsonian:

After decades of research, American archaeologist Mark Lehner has some answers about the mysteries of the Egyptian colossus

When Mark Lehner was a teenager in the late 1960s, his parents introduced him to the writings of the famed clairvoyant Edgar Cayce. During one of his trances, Cayce, who died in 1945, saw that refugees from the lost city of Atlantis buried their secrets in a hall of records under the Sphinx and that the hall would be discovered before the end of the 20th century.

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Pinch Away The Pain: Scorpion Venom Could Be An Alternative To Morphine

Researchers are investigating new ways for developing a novel painkiller based on natural compounds found in the venom of scorpions. (Credit: iStockphoto/John Bell)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 21, 2010) — Scorpion venom is notoriously poisonous -- but it might be used as an alternative to dangerous and addictive painkillers like morphine, a Tel Aviv University researcher claims.

Prof. Michael Gurevitz of Tel Aviv University's Department of Plant Sciences is investigating new ways for developing a novel painkiller based on natural compounds found in the venom of scorpions. These compounds have gone through millions of years of evolution and some show high efficacy and specificity for certain components of the body with no side effects, he says.

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Ancient Wall Possibly Built by King Solomon

Dr. Eilat Mazar, Hebrew University of Jerusalem archaeologist, points to the tenth century B.C.E. excavations that were uncovered under her direction in the Ophel area adjacent to the Old City of Jerusalem. Credit: Sasson Tiram, Hebrew University.

From Live Science:

A section of an ancient city wall of Jerusalem from the tenth century B.C.E. (between 1000 BC and 901 BC), possibly built by King Solomon, has been revealed in archaeological excavations.

The section of wall, about 230 feet long (70 meters) and 19 feet (6 meters) high, is located in the area known as the Ophel, between the City of David and the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

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Aids: Is The End In Sight?

From The Independent:

Mass prescription of anti-retroviral drugs could eradicate the disease within 40 years, scientist says.

Testing everyone at risk of HIV and treating them with anti-retroviral drugs could eradicate the global epidemic within 40 years, according to the scientist at the centre of a radical new approach to fighting Aids.

An aggressive programme of prescribing anti-retroviral treatment (ART) to every person infected with HIV could stop all new infections in five years and eventually wipe out the epidemic, said Brian Williams of the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis.

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U.S. Pinpoints Code Writer Behind Google Attack: Report

A bird flies over Google China headquarters building next to a Chinese national flag in Beijing in this January 14, 2010 file photo. Credit: Reuters/Jason Lee

From Reuters:

BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. government analysts believe a Chinese man with government links wrote the key part of a spyware programme used in hacker attacks on Google last year, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

The man, a security consultant in his 30s, posted sections of the programme to a hacking forum where he described it as something he was "working on," the paper said, quoting an unidentified researcher working for the U.S. government.

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On Thick Ice: Live From An Antarctic Drilling Trip

Integrated Oceans Drilling Program Operations Superintendent Ron Grout on deck with icebergs in the background. (Photograph by Etienne Claassen, IODP/TAMU)

From Popular Mechanics:

PM's far-flung geological correspondent, Trevor Williams, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, reports from the scientific research ship JOIDES Resolution. Part of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, the Wilkes Land expedition has been drilling deep into the ocean floor around Antarctica to learn how the ice sheet reacted in warmer climates of the past, which will help scientists predict how it will respond to future warming.

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Retreating Glaciers May Boost Dust Storms

A massive dust storm streaming from northern Africa across the
Atlantic Ocean in February 2006. Credit: SeaWiFS/NASA

From Cosmos:

SAN DIEGO: The retreat of glaciers and the loss of moisture from soil due to climate change will likely increase the number of large-scale dust storms, such as those that blanketed Sydney in 2009, scientists predict.

“Every year, hundreds of millions of tonnes of African dust are carried westward across the Atlantic to South America, the Caribbean and to the North America,” as well as across the Mediterranean and the Middle East, said Joseph Prospero, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Miami.

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