US Marines Embrace Web 2.0

[Photo: USMC; Linker: MY]

In About-Face, Marines Embrace Web 2.0 -- The Danger Room

Last summer, the U.S. Marine Corps took a draconian approach to Web 2.0, issuing a sweeping ban on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social media sites from its networks.

In an order issued yesterday, the service changed course, issuing guidelines to encourage “responsible and effective use” of social networking technology. “The Marine Corps embraces and strives to leverage the advances of internet-based capabilities,” the directive states. “Effective immediately, internet-based capabilities will be made available to all MCEN [Marine Corps Enterprise Network] users.”

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My Comment: I call this a positive direction. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. they all add to the morale and well being of our soldiers.

$500 Million Launcher Lacks One Thing: Rocket

The Constellation Program's Ares I-X test rocket roars off Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 28. At right is space shuttle Atlantis. Photo courtesy of Scott Andrews

From MSNBC:

Space industry tense over pending demise of Constellation program.

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. - Anyone need a $500 million, 355-foot steel tower for launching rockets into space?

There's one available at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Brand new, never been used.

The mobile launcher has been built for a rocket called the Ares 1. The problem is, there is not yet any such thing as an Ares 1 rocket — and if the Obama administration has its way, there never will be.

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For One Tiny Instant, Physicists May Have Broken A Law of Nature

This image of a full-energy collision between gold ions shows the paths taken by thousands of subatomic particles produced during the impact. (Credit: Image courtesy of Yale University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 30, 2010) — For a brief instant, it appears, scientists at Brook­haven National Laboratory on Long Island recently discovered a law of nature had been broken.

Action still resulted in an equal and opposite reaction, gravity kept the Earth circling the Sun, and conservation of energy remained intact. But for the tiniest fraction of a second at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), physicists created a symmetry-breaking bubble of space where parity no longer existed.

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Mysterious Lead Coffin Found Near Rome

The lead coffin archaeologists found in the abandoned ancient city of Gabii, Italy could contain a gladiator or bishop. Credit: University of Michigan.

From Live Science:

Archaeologists found a 1,000-pound lead coffin while digging in the ruins of an ancient city near Rome last summer. The mission now is to determine who or what is buried inside.

The project – which is headed by Nicola Terrenato, a professor of classical studies at the University of Michigan – is the largest American-led dig in Italy in the past 50 years.

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'Uranium-Eating' Bacteria To Clean-Up Radioactive Sites

Ranger Mine - a uranium mine in Kakadu National Park, Australia.

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Some bacteria have the capacity to stabilise uranium contaminated sites, and if they are used they could reducing the chances of these sites contaminating major waterways and ecosystems, U.S. scientists have said.

Of the millions of tonnes of bacteria living within the Earth's subsurface, some are able to transform the oxidative state of uranium, which defines how the element with interact with oxygen to form various molecules. They change it from the radioactive, toxic and water soluble uranium (VI) to the less soluble, stationary and therefore less harmful uranium (IV) as part of their normal growth.

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With Processor Speeds Stagnating, Researchers Look Beyond Silicon Toward Computing's Future

Flexible Silicon More flexible circuits can help silicon stay relevant in the future of computing Science/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

From Popular Mechanics:

After a breathless race through the '80s and '90s, desktop computer clock speeds have spent the last decade languishing around the 3 gigahertz mark. That stagnation in processing speeds has prompted scientists to debate whether it's time to move beyond semiconductors -- and what better place to debate than in the journal Science? Ars Technica gives a top-down overview of several future paths laid out in the journal's latest issue by researchers such as Thomas Theis and Paul Solomon of IBM.

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James Lovelock: Humans Are Too Stupid To Prevent Climate Change

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change, according to the British scientist James Lovelock. Illustration: Murdo Macleod

From The Guardian:

In his first in-depth interview since the theft of UEA emails, the scientist blames inertia and democracy for lack of action.

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory.

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Sex Infection Gonorrhea Risks Becoming "Superbug"

From Reuters:

The sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea risks becoming a drug-resistant "superbug" if doctors do not devise new ways of treating it, a leading sexual health expert said.

Catherine Ison, a specialist on gonorrhea from Britain's Health Protection Agency said a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting in Manila next week would be vital to efforts to try to stop the bug repeatedly adapting to and overcoming drugs.

"This is a very clever bacteria. If this problem isn't addressed, there is a real possibility that gonorrhea will become a very difficult infection to treat," she said in a telephone interview.

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YouTube's 50 Best Videos

From Time Magazine:

YouTube — breeding ground for the Web's wackiest and wildest viral videos — turns 5 in 2010. In recognition, TIME takes a look back at the site's 50 greatest hits

YouTube's most viewed video of all time is an unlikely champion. Seen more than 170 million times since its posting in May 2007, "Charlie Bit My Finger" was never meant to be anything more than a family flick. But the Internet's hive mind saw something it liked and catapulted the clip, which depicts a laughing British baby gnawing on the finger of his crying brother, past "Evolution of Dance" as YouTube's views champ by the fall of 2009.

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How The Human Brain Got Bigger By Accident And Not Through Evolution

Colin Blakemore believes the human brain became bigger through genetic accident and not evolution. Photograph: David Hartley / Rex Features

From The Guardian:

Oxford neurobiologist Colin Blakemore tells Robin McKie why he thinks a mutation in the human brain 200,000 years ago suddenly made us a super-intelligent species.

According to Woody Allen, it is his second favourite organ and it absorbs more than 25% of the energy that our bodies generate. But why? For what purposes did the human brain evolve and why does it take so much of our physiological resources?

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3DTVs Too Expensive For Mass Market

Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana in Avatar, or Dances with Wolves in Space 3D, to give it its working title Photo: REUTERS

From The Telegraph:

A survey suggests that 53 per cent of consumers won’t pay more than £499 for 3DTVs, which currently retail at around £2,000.

Three dimensional television might be the latest product to be receiving all the hype, but a new survey suggests that just 1.4 per cent of consumers are willing to pay the £2,000 price tags that new sets typically carry.

In a survey for discount site VoucherCodes.co.uk, 28.6 per cent of those asked said they would like to buy a 3DTV but that current prices were far too high. More than half – 53 per cent – said that they would only be willing to pay up to £499.

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The Father Of Civilisation: Alexander The Great

Alexander the Great: The Greek leader made Alexandria a place of knowledge, discovery and sexual intrigues

From The Daily Mail:

There is not, and has never been, another city to match it. It was a glittering metropolis, home to the most sexually charismatic queen of all time, founded by a man whose megalomaniac ambitions knew no bounds.

It was a buzzing hub that boasted one of the seven wonders of the world, where intellectual geniuses from both East and West met to tussle and debate in a library containing all the knowledge on the planet.

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Physicists Detect Rare Geo-Neutrino Particles, Peek Into Earth's Core

Inside the scintillator at Borexino. (Credit: Borexino Collaboration)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 29, 2010) — Using a delicate instrument located under a mountain in central Italy, two University of Massachusetts Amherst physicists are measuring some of the faintest and rarest particles ever detected, geo-neutrinos, with the greatest precision yet achieved. The data reveal, for the first time, a well defined signal, above background noise, of the extremely rare geo-neutrino particle from deep within Earth.

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Toyota Recall Might Be Caused by Cosmic Rays

From Live Science:

It may not lessen Toyota's woes to hear that the problems the company has been having with faulty gas pedals could be blamed on cosmic rays from space. Sound unbelievable? The concept is actually a lot more plausible than you might think.

Toyota's sticky gas pedals caused sudden and unintended acceleration in several of the automaker's top-selling Toyota and Lexus-brand cars, which led to a massive recall of more than 9 million vehicles worldwide, beginning in November.

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'Infections Found': Inside The Great Scareware Scam

Fake virus scans often look just like the real thing.

From New Scientist:

ONE day in March 2008, Kent Woerner got a disturbing phone call from a teacher at an elementary school in Beloit, Kansas. An 11-year-old student had triggered a security scan on a computer she was using, revealing that the machine contained pornographic images. Worse still, the images had appeared on-screen as the scan took place.

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Earth's Biggest Tree Rings Tell Fiery Tales

The tree rings of 52 fallen giant sequoias, Earth's biggest trees, have revealed a 3,000-year-old history of droughts and fires. Hemera/ThinkStock

From Discovery News:

Fifty-two giant fallen giant sequoias reveal a 3,000-year-old history of fire and drought after giant chainsaws expose their rings.

Using huge chainsaws and strong backs, the largest trees in the world are finally giving up their 3,000-year record of fires and droughts. No trees, however, were harmed in the making of this fire history.

"We only used dead trees," emphasized tree ring researcher Thomas Swetnam of the University of Arizona. Swetnam led the study that was reported in a recent issue of the journal Fire Ecology. "We spent multiple years collecting the wood and hauling it back to Tucson."

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A Conversation With Microsoft's Marketing Strategist

Photo: David Webster isn't the typical 'Softie. Not only is he far from Redmond (he lives in Connecticut), but he's got more experience picking brand names than writing code. (Credit: Microsoft)

From CNET:

SAN FRANCISCO--David Webster had a pretty busy year in 2009, trying to convince the world that Windows 7 was their idea and adding the word Bing to their collective vocabulary.

That said, Microsoft's chief marketing strategist doesn't foresee much time to rest. This year, all Webster has to do is persuade consumers that Office is cool, that Mom and Dad need their own Xbox, and that a Windows Phone can be a credible alternative to the iPhone. Luckily, Microsoft is willing to spend a few bucks to do all that.

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Line2 Adds a Second Line to Your iPhone

The Line2 mobile application from Toktumi adds a second phone line to your iPhone.
(http://www.line2.com/)

From ABC News:

iPhone App Lets You Place Calls Without Using AT&T Minutes.

Line2 is a mobile app from Toktumi that's a refreshing option for iPhone users who need to maintain a separate personal and a business phone number.

It's also useful — and potentially revolutionary — for iPhone owners who want to cut down on their monthly voice minutes by allowing them to place calls over Wi-Fi as well as over 3G Voice Over IP (VOIP).

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UK Beaches Swamped By Plastic Litter, Say Campaigners

From The BBC:

UK beaches are being ruined by an ever-accumulating tide of plastic litter, the Marine Conservation Society says.

Volunteers at 400 beaches collected 1,849 items of litter per kilometre in the weekend of the MCS's 2009 survey and 63% of it was plastic, it said.

It said the amount of rubbish was 77% higher than in 1994 - its first annual survey - and the proportion of plastic volunteers found had never been higher.

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Secret Copyright Talks Document Leaks

Acta, the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement, is designed to cover theft of copyright, from designer handbags to music online Photo: Romina Shama

From The Telegraph:

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is being negotiated in secret, but the full text has now been leaked.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, the controversial global treaty that covers intellectual property from digital media to designer handbags, has been leaked in full for the first time. Secret negotiations are still going on regarding the document that, some groups hope, will make those who share copyrighted material online subject to far harsher penalties.

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