Thousands Of Authors Opt Out Of Google Book Settlement

From The Guardian:

Some 6,500 writers, from Thomas Pynchon to Jeffrey Archer, have opted out of Google's controversial plan to digitise millions of books.

Former children's laureates Quentin Blake, Anne Fine and Jacqueline Wilson, bestselling authors Jeffrey Archer and Louis de Bernières and critical favourites Thomas Pynchon, Zadie Smith and Jeanette Winterson have all opted out of the controversial Google book settlement, court documents have revealed.

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Coral Reefs Will Dissolve Within 100 Years In Acidic Seas, Say Marine Experts

The Great Barrier Reef off Australia's coast (above) is known for its abundance of marine life.

From The Daily Mail:

The world's most stunning coral reefs will have dissolved within 100 years, a new study claims.

Scientists say rising levels of acid in the seas and warmer ocean temperatures are wiping out the spectacular reefs enjoyed by millions of divers, tourists and wildlife lovers.

The destruction would also be a disaster for tropical fish and marine life which use coral reefs as nurseries and feeding grounds.

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Does Coffee Kill The Benefits Of Vitamins?

From Live Science:

Any beverage or food containing caffeine such as coffee, tea, chocolate and some sodas can inhibit the absorption of vitamins and minerals and increase their excretion from the body.

This raises a more important question: What are the benefits of vitamins?

It’s very important to talk with your doctor before you take any vitamin and mineral pills, especially if you take prescription medicines, have any health problems or are elderly. Taking too much of a vitamin or mineral can cause problems with some medical tests or interfere with drugs you’re taking.

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Where Did Insects Come From? New Study Establishes Relationships Among All Arthropods

This animal, Speleonectes tulumensis, is from a group of rare, blind, cave-dwelling crustaceans called "remipedes." The new analysis in Nature shows that the remipedes are the crustaceans most closely related to the insects. Remipedes and insects together are now shown to be a sister group to all the other crustacea including the crabs, shrimps, and lobsters. (Credit: Simon Richards)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 22, 2010) — Since the dawn of the biological sciences, humankind has struggled to comprehend the relationships among the major groups of "jointed-legged" animals -- the arthropods. Now, a team of researchers, including Dr. Joel Martin and Dr. Regina Wetzer from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM), has finished a completely new analysis of the evolutionary relationships among the arthropods, answering many questions that defied previous attempts to unravel how these creatures were connected.

Their study is scheduled for publication in the journal Nature on Feb. 24.

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The Future Of Money: It’s Flexible, Frictionless And (Almost) Free

Cash in the clouds—neither paper nor plastic.
Illustration: Aegir Hallmundur; Benjamin Franklin: Corbis

From Wired Magazine:

A simple typo gave Michael Ivey the idea for his company. One day in the fall of 2008, Ivey’s wife, using her pink RAZR phone, sent him a note via Twitter. But instead of typing the letter d at the beginning of the tweet — which would have sent the note as a direct message, a private note just for Ivey — she hit p. It could have been an embarrassing snafu, but instead it sparked a brainstorm. That’s how you should pay people, Ivey publicly replied. Ivey’s friends quickly jumped into the conversation, enthusiastically endorsing the idea. Ivey, a computer programmer based in Alabama, began wondering if he and his wife hadn’t hit on something: What if people could transfer money over Twitter for next to nothing, simply by typing a username and a dollar amount?

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We Are Happiest At 74, Says New Report

From The Telegraph:

Seventy-four year-olds are the most contented people in the population, according to new research.

Fewer responsibilities, financial worries and more time to yourself leads to contentment previously unknown in earlier life.

According to the report from the teenage years until 40 happiness declines. It levels off until 46 and then starts to increase until peaking at 74.

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Coral Reefs Form On 'Ancient Template'

The honeycomb reef shape dominates the region.

From The BBC:

Red Sea coral reefs get their complex shape from an ancient 'seabed template', say scientists.

Their distinctive appearance can be seen clearly in satellite images of the region and has its origin in seabed erosion thousands of years ago.

The scientists say the corals have simply adopted and accentuated the pattern created in once-exposed rock moulded by heavy rains.

They presented the findings at the Ocean Sciences meeting in Portland, US.

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New Space Engines May Trade Fuel For Photons

From Popular Mechanics:

Interplanetary travel may soon be powered by propulsion systems lifted from sci-fi novels, as researchers reach for faster, lighter space engines.

Chemical combustion engines are an unbeatable technology for escaping Earth’s atmosphere and gravitational pull. In space, however, these rockets are inefficient—they burn through huge quantities of fuel while generating more thrust than necessary. That’s why researchers are increasingly turning to nonchemical propulsion systems, which could drastically lighten spacecraft while achieving higher speeds. Some of the ideas being researched, like antimatter engines, depend on established physics but go far beyond current technology. “Someone’s got to think beyond the obvious,” says Marc Millis, a propulsion physicist at NASA’s Glenn Research Center. “You have enough other people in the world doing the next obvious thing. By reaching beyond that, you can discover the breakthroughs other folks aren’t even looking for, and change everything.”

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Breakthrough in All-Optical Processing Could Bring Terabit Data Speeds

Toward Faster Signal Processing Georgia Tech professor Seth Marder, center, and his colleagues have worked for several years to optimize the right molecules with a unique set of properties that could open the door to blazing fast all-optical processing speeds. Rob Felt

From Popular Science:

Do you think your connection speed is fast? Do you tout your torrent bit rate? Perhaps your rig is swift, but there's no reason it couldn't be many times faster. The only thing standing in the way is some creative materials science, and researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology may have just found the key to converting everything from individual computers to data networks into blazing-fast, all-optical transmission devices.

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Plans For '.xxx' Porn Net Domain Revived

The debate about a .xxx domain for internet porn is back on. Photograph: Dan Chung

From The Guardian:

Judges say plans for a .xxx porn domain – blocked by Icann on moral grounds in 2007 – should be reconsidered.

Nearly three years after plans to create a new internet domain specifically for pornography were blocked, the idea could be back on the table once again.

An arbitration panel at the International Centre for Dispute Resolution has ruled that the original decision to prevent the introduction of a new adults-only domain, .xxx, should be reconsidered.

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Where Planes Go To Die: Massive £22bn Air Force 'Boneyard' Revealed In High Resolution By Google Earth

(Click Image To Enlarge)
Four of the numerous types of military aircraft kept at the site in Arizona

From The Daily Mail:

It's where old planes go to die - a 2,600-acre patch of U.S. desert where several generations of military aircraft are stored in what has been dubbed 'The Boneyard'.

The $35billion (£22billion) worth of outdated planes is kept as spare parts for current models at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona.

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My Comment: The Google link is here.

Twitter Use Explodes, Hits 50 Million Tweets Per Day

From PC World:

Recent reports saying Twitter's popularity is declining might not be very accurate. Users of the micro-blogging social network are posting more messages than ever -- as many as 50 million 140 character-long messages every day, the company on Monday announced in a blog post.

Call it noise or information overload, but Twitter measured over 600 tweets per second from its users, Twitter's Kevin Weil blogged. The social network is just growing larger and larger, with more users joining every day, Twitter says.

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Bloom Box Generates Buzz, Skepticism With 60 Minutes Spot

From ABC News:

Could New Fuel Cell Technology Be a Game-Changer?

K.R. Sridhar, founder of the Silicon Valley clean tech start-up Bloom Energy, says he'd like to see his company's Bloom Box fuel cell technology lighting up most American households within the next 10 years.

That's a lofty promise from the Sunnyvale, Calif., company that doesn't officially launch until Wednesday. And many experts are quite skeptical about whether Mr. Sridhar, who has already raised about $400 million to produce his boxes, can bring expensive fuel cell technology to the masses.

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Apple Removes 5,000 Apps From App Store

Developers report that Apple has started an App Store crackdown
against apps featuring 'overtly sexual' content

From The Telegraph:

Apple has banned thousands of apps from the App Store, blaming inappropriate content.

Apple has removed around 5,000 apps from its App Store, including some that it claims feature "overtly sexual" content.

Dozens of developers received a message from Apple stating that the company was refining the guidelines under which the App Store operates, and that content that it had "originally believed to be suitable for distribution" were now no longer deemed appropriate, following "numerous complaints from customers about this type of content".

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Brain System Behind General Intelligence Discovered

The brain regions important for general intelligence are found in several specific places (orange regions shown on the brain on the left). Looking inside the brain reveals the connections between these regions, which are particularly important to general intelligence. In the image on the right, the brain has been made partly transparent. The big orange regions in the right image are connections (like cables) that connect the specific brain regions in the image on the left. (Credit: PNAS)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 23, 2010) — A collaborative team of neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the University of Iowa, the University of Southern California (USC), and the Autonomous University of Madrid have mapped the brain structures that affect general intelligence.

The study, to be published the week of February 22 in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, adds new insight to a highly controversial question: What is intelligence, and how can we measure it?

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Hourglass Figures Affect Men's Brains Like a Drug

From Live Science:

Watching a curvaceous woman can feel like a reward in the brain of men, much as drinking alcohol or taking drugs might, research now reveals.

These new findings might help explain the preoccupation men can have toward pornography, scientists added.

Shapely hips in women are linked with fertility and overall health. As such, it makes sense evolutionarily speaking that studies across cultures have shown men typically find hourglass figures sexy.

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Hacking Inquiry Puts China’s Elite In New Light

Shanghai Jiaotong University students won a programming competition this month, once again defeating colleges like Stanford. Jillian Murphy

From The New York Times:

SHANGHAI — With its sterling reputation and its scientific bent, Shanghai Jiaotong University has the feel of an Ivy League institution.

The university has alliances with elite American ones like Duke and the University of Michigan. And it is so rich in science and engineering talent that Microsoft and Intel have moved into a research park directly adjacent to the school.

But Jiaotong, whose sprawling campus here has more than 33,000 students, is facing an unpleasant question: is it a base for sophisticated computer hackers?

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Gemfields Discovers 6,225-Carat 'Elephant' Emerald In Zambia

The emerald has been named 'Insofu', which means 'elephant' in the language of the Bemba people indigenous to the region

From The Telegraph:

Gemstone producer Gemfields today announced the discovery of an "exceptional" 6,225 carat rough emerald in its Kagem mine in Zambia.

The emerald was recovered during normal mining operations on February 5, the company said in a statement, and is being examined by Gemfields' experts to establish a clearer understanding of its value and significance.

The emerald has been named "Insofu" (which means "elephant" in the language of the Bemba people indigenous to the region) due to its size and in honour of the World Land Trust's "Wild Lands Elephant Corridor Project", of which Gemfields is a participant.

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Study Links Violence To Take-Away Alcohol

From BBC:

US scientists have shown what they say is a direct link between the number of shops selling alcohol in an area and the violence occurring there.

The study was conducted in Cincinnati and considered all types of outlet, including bars and restaurants.

The more shops selling alcohol in an area, the scientists say, the more assaults were recorded there.

They presented the study at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.

Professor William Pridemore from Indiana University, who led the study, spoke at the meeting in San Diego.

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A Steady Buzz of Changes

From Technology Review:

Is there time for Google to salvage its social network after a botched launch?

Since the troubled launch of Google's new social network earlier this month, the company has introduced a flurry of changes in an effort to address user confusion and privacy concerns. Google says its engineers have been working nonstop to adjust features and incorporate user feedback. But the product, called Buzz, has already spurred criticism, a complaint to the FTC, and a lawsuit. While experts say there's no way to undo the damage done by botched privacy controls in the first few days after launch, some believe the service still has a chance to redeem itself.

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