With Artificial Photosynthesis, A Bottle of Water Could Produce Enough Energy To Power A House

Potential Energy Cells? shrff14, via Flickr.com

From Popular Science:

One of the interesting side effects of last year's stimulus bill was $400 million in funding for ARPA-E, the civilian, energy-focused cousin of DARPA. And in this week's first ever ARPA-E conference, MIT chemist Dan Nocera showed how well he put that stimulus money to use by highlighting his new photosynthetic process. Using a special catalyst, the process splits water into oxygen and hydrogen fuel efficiently enough to power a home using only sunlight and a bottle of water.

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Knowing The Mind Of God: Seven Theories Of Everything

Getting inside the mind of God (Image: John Lund/Getty)

From New Scientist:

The "theory of everything" is one of the most cherished dreams of science. If it is ever discovered, it will describe the workings of the universe at the most fundamental level and thus encompass our entire understanding of nature. It would also answer such enduring puzzles as what dark matter is, the reason time flows in only one direction and how gravity works. Small wonder that Stephen Hawking famously said that such a theory would be "the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God".

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Twitter Flies Past Its 10 Billionth Tweet

The growing number of tweets per day (Source: Twitter)

From The Guardian:

Twitter passed another milestone when a person unknown posted the system's 10 billionth tweet.

Overnight, Twitter flew past the 10bn tweet milestone, according to the GigaTweet site, which tracks the microblogging service. It has taken more than three years to get there. However, Twitter's rapid growth means that the next 10bn should be knocked off in 203 days.

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Mars Spacecraft Breaks Through Data Download Milestone As It Beams 12,000 Amazing Pictures Back To Earth

This image shows dark sand dunes and inverted craters in the Arabia Terra region of Mars. The sand is dark because it was probably derived from basalt. The 'inverted' shape is found on Mars and Earth where erosion has stripped away surrounding topography

From The Daily Mail:

There crystal clear views of alien rock formations are just a few of the impressive images sent back from Nasa's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter.

Captured by the onboard HiRise camera, they show dramatic landscapes including inverted craters, deep water-forged gullies and frost covered dunes. To date, scientists have released 11,762 such images to the public.

They were sent back to Earth from the spacecraft, which is circling the Red Planet 72million miles away.

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Asteroid Killed Off The Dinosaurs, Says International Scientific Panel

An artist's rendering of the moment of impact when an enormous space rock struck the Yucatán peninsula at the end of the Cretaceous Period. (Credit: Don Davis, NASA)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 4, 2010) — The Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, which wiped out the dinosaurs and more than half of species on Earth, was caused by an asteroid colliding with Earth and not massive volcanic activity, according to a comprehensive review of all the available evidence, published in the journal Science.

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Happy People Talk More, And With More Substance

From Live Science:

Happy people tend to talk more than unhappy people, but when they do, it tends to be less small talk and more substance, a new study finds.

A group of psychologists from the University of Arizona and Washington University in St. Louis set out to find whether happy and unhappy people differ in the types of conversations they tend to have.

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Apple Patent Case 'Could Affect All Android Phones'

Photo: HTC was the first manufacturer to use Android in its phones

From The BBC:

Apple's legal action against HTC may have "wider implications" for all phone makers using Google's Android operating system, an analyst has warned.

Ian Fogg of Forrester Research said that the case against HTC, in which Apple alleges infringement of 20 of its patents, could be the first of many.

Although Apple has not named Google in the suits, many of the named patents relate to operating system processes.

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Globe-Warning Methane Is Gushing From A Russian Ice Shelf

From Discover Magazine:

Behind the ongoing back-and-forth fights over climate change that usually focus on carbon, there has lingered the threat of the powerful greenhouse gas methane being released into the atmosphere and causing even worse trouble. In August we reported on a study that noted methane bubbling up from the seafloor near islands north of Norway, giving scientists a scare. This week in Science, another team reports seeing the same thing during thousands of observations of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf on Russia’s north coast, which is even more worrisome because it’s a huge methane deposit.

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How UAVs Will Replace The Air Force's Current Fleet

When unmanned aircraft can refuel one another, their time on a mission will be dramatically extended. The Air Force Research Laboratory is spending $49 million over the next four years to create a system that will allow UAVs to autonomously refuel in the air, as seen in this 2007 RQ-4 Global Hawk test.

From Popular Mechanics:

In its latest plans for the future, the Air Force envisions swapping its pilots for a fleet of versatile—and affordable—unmanned airplanes. A single UAV with interchangeable payloads could replace several legacy airplanes. Here's a look at some possible trades.

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Russia Will End Space Tourism Flights When Shuttle Retires

Charles Simonyi Prepares for Space Courtesy of Space Adventures and Charles Simonyi

From Popular Science:

Well, it looks like Charles Simonyi might have to wait a while for a third trip, because space tourism is going on hiatus. With the shuttle's cancellation leaving Russia as the only country able to service the International Space Station (ISS), the Russian government has announced it will no longer let civilians hitch a ride on Soyuz flights.

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Dark, Dangerous Asteroids Found Lurking Near Earth

Now you see it: a near-Earth object becomes visible in infrared
(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA)

From New Scientist:

An infrared space telescope has spotted several very dark asteroids that have been lurking unseen near Earth's orbit. Their obscurity and tilted orbits have kept them hidden from surveys designed to detect things that might hit our planet.

Called the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the new NASA telescope launched on 14 December on a mission to map the entire sky at infrared wavelengths. It began its survey in mid-January.

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NASA Chief Bolden Seeks 'Plan B' For The Space Agency

Astronaut Nicholas Patrick holds onto the International Space Station's cupola during a February spacewalk. Reuters

From Wall Street Journal:

NASA chief Charles Bolden has asked senior managers to draw up an alternate plan for the space agency after members of Congress indicated they wanted to reject a White House proposal to hire private companies to ferry U.S. astronauts into orbit and beyond.

In an internal National Aeronautics and Space Administration memo viewed by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Bolden ordered officials to map out "what a potential compromise might look like" to satisfy critics on Capitol Hill. By calling for an alternative plan, Mr. Bolden threatened to undercut White House efforts to get its proposed NASA budget through Congress.

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Industry Challenges: Drowning In Data

Digital sequencing systems can capture vast amounts of genetic data, but interpretation has been difficult. Credit: Monty Rakusen/Getty Images

From Technology Review:

The personalized-medicine industry aims to convert information about an individual's genome into useful diagnostic tests and targeted drug treatments. Companies that deal with gathering the information--sequencing genomes and identifying genetic variations--have made impressive technical advances that have dramatically reduced the cost of analyzing DNA (see "Faster Tools to Scrutinize the Genome"). Now the biggest challenge lies in interpreting the huge volume of genetic data being generated. Studies have identified thousands of candidates for genes underlying common diseases, for example, but it's not clear how to make that information medically useful.

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Apple Sues Google Phone Manufacturer As Jobs Warns: Create Your Own Technology, Don't Steal Ours

An HTC smartphone (right) alongside an Apple iPhone. Apple are suing HTC Corp for infringing on hardware and software patents

From The Daily Mail:

Apple is suing the company which makes touchscreen smartphones using Google software.

Apple has accused Taiwan’s HTC Corp of infringing 20 hardware and software patents related to the iPhone.

Although the lawsuit does not name Google Inc as a defendant, Apple’s move is viewed by many as an indirect attack on the company, whose Nexus One smartphone is manufactured by HTC.

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IPad Goes On Sale April 3; Pre-Orders Begin In A Week

From Gadget Lab:

Apple announced Friday that the first iPads will be available on April 3 and that the long-awaited device will be available for pre-order on March 12. The launch is for the Wi-Fi-only version, with the 3G-enabled device on sale later in the month.

The late-April release of the 3G version will also coincide with rollout of both models in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K., Apple said.

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Update: IPad to hit US stores April 3, then 9 more markets -- Reuters

First of Missing Primitive Stars Found

The newly discovered red giant star S1020549 dominates this artist's conception. The primitive star contains 6,000 times less heavy elements than our Sun, indicating that it formed very early in the Universe's history. Located in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 290,000 light-years away, the star's presence supports the theory that our galaxy underwent a "cannibal" phase, growing to its current size by swallowing dwarf galaxies and other galactic building blocks. (Credit: David A. Aguilar / CfA)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 4, 2010) — Astronomers have discovered a relic from the early universe -- a star that may have been among the second generation of stars to form after the Big Bang. Located in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 290,000 light-years away, the star has a remarkably similar chemical make-up to the Milky Way's oldest stars. Its presence supports the theory that our galaxy underwent a "cannibal" phase, growing to its current size by swallowing dwarf galaxies and other galactic building blocks.

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Violent Planet: The Forces That Shape Earth

From Live Science:

Earth is a violent planet, and always has been. In fact it is much calmer today than in the past. As the planet continues to cool – 4.5 billion years after it formed – what was once likely a lava world has become a temperate planet that's two-thirds covered by water and hospitable to life.

But recent events and new research show that the geologic havoc is far from over.

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Apple iPad's Store Debut Pushed Back

Watch CBS News Videos Online

From CBS News/AP:

(AP) The much-anticipated iPad tablet computer from Apple Inc. will start hitting U.S. store shelves on April 3, slightly later than originally planned.

When Apple unveiled the touch-screen device Jan. 27, the company said the first iPads would reach the market in "late March" worldwide, not just in the U.S.

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YouTube Adds Video Captions For Deaf

From The BBC:

YouTube is making the tens of millions of videos it hosts more accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing by putting automatic captions on them.

The Google-owned company said this use of speech recognition technology is probably the biggest experiment of its kind online.

Previously captions were only on a small amount of content.

"A core part of YouTube's DNA is access to content," said the firm's product manager Hunter Walk.

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Earth Raised Up Its Magnetic Shield Early, Protecting Water And Emerging Life

From Discover Magazine:

Here we are drinking coffee and tweeting and otherwise going about our lives, generally not giving much thought to the protection that the Earth’s magnetic field affords us from the solar wind. But that magnetic field is crucial for our existence. Now, new findings in Science say that this protective shield originated even 200 million years earlier than scientists had previously thought, perhaps protecting the planet’s water from evaporating away and aiding the rise of life on the early Earth.

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