Facebook Attacked Over Refusal To Install Panic Button

From Times Online:

Britain's online child protection agency attacked Facebook yesterday for its continued refusal to install a panic button on its site.

Richard Allan, head of policy for the social networking site in Europe, said it had agreed a series of measures allowing users in the UK to report concerns about child safety directly to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (Ceop).

The new system flags up Ceop after users have already gone through Facebook's own reporting procedure.

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Google 'Suicide' Search Feature Offers Lifeline

From ABC News:

Suicide-Related Searches Trigger Information for Suicide Prevention Hotline.

Google may be in the business of search, but one of its newest features could save lives.

Starting last week, Google searches related to suicide started appearing with a message guiding users to the toll-free number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The number is 1-800-273-8255.

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For Prom, Teens Let YouTube Do The Asking

From ABC News:

High School Students Woo Would-Be Prom Dates With Online Creativity.

Sweaty-palmed, tongue-tied teens take note: If you want to score a date to the prom, asking the simple question just might not cut it anymore.

Hallway conversations and handwritten notes might have worked for previous generations, but with prom season under way, high school students across the country are turning to YouTube to give an age-old rite of passage a new media moment of fame.

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New Material Is A Breakthrough In Magnetism; Step Closer to 'Magnetic Monopole'

Physicists have created a structure that acts like a single pole of a magnet -- a step closer to isolating a 'magnetic monopole.' (Credit: Image courtesy of Imperial College London)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2010) — Researchers from Imperial College London have created a structure that acts like a single pole of a magnet, a feat that has evaded scientists for decades.

The researchers say their new Nature Physics study takes them a step closer to isolating a 'magnetic monopole.'

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Navy SEALs Recognize Anger More Quickly

From Live Science:

The brains of elite soldiers can respond faster to signs of anger than normal, which could help them detect threats and make the difference between life and death when under fire.

The differences in the brains of those who excel in extreme circumstances are poorly understood. Such research might help improve military performance, explained neuroscientist Alan Simmons at the University of California at San Diego.

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Body Heat: Sweden's New Green Energy Source

Commuters at Stockholm's Central station. Jim Stenman

From Time Magazine:

It's 7:30 a.m. on a wintry morning in downtown Stockholm and a sea of Swedes are flooding Central Station to catch a train to work. The station is toasty thanks to the busy shops and restaurants and the body heat being generated by the 250,000 commuters who crowd Scandinavia's busiest travel hub each day. This heat used to be lost by the end of the morning rush hour. Now, however, engineers have figured out a way to harness it and transfer it to a newly refurbished office building down the block. Unbeknownst to them, these sweaty Swedes have become a green energy source: "They're cheap and renewable," says Karl Sundholm, a project manager at Jernhusen, a Stockholm real estate company, and one of the creators of the system.

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On Its Way To Britain: The Killer Asian Hornet Which Threatens Our Native Honeybees

An Asian hornet is seen in a beehive in south western France. The pest has decimated hives in Europe and is on its way to Britain

From The Daily Mail:

Giant hornets with a searing sting and a hearty appetite for honeybees are making a beeline for Britain.

The Asian hornet is four times the size of our native honeybees and is armed with a sting that has been compared to a hot nail being hammered into the body.

Aggressive and belligerent, it preys on honeybees, 'picking them off' as they leave their hive, until the colony is so exhausted that the hornets can move in and ransack it.

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Yahoo, Feds Battle Over E-Mail Privacy

From Threat Level:

Yahoo and federal prosecutors in Colorado are embroiled in a privacy battle that’s testing whether the Constitution’s warrant requirements apply to Americans’ e-mail.

The legal dust-up, unsealed late Tuesday, concerns a 1986 law that already allows the government to obtain a suspect’s e-mail from an ISP or webmail provider without a probable-cause warrant, once it’s been stored for 180 days or more. The government now contends it can get e-mail under 180-days old if that e-mail has been read by the owner, and the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections don’t apply.

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Congress To Archive Every Tweet Ever Posted Publicly

From The BBC:

The Library of Congress is to archive every single public tweet ever made.

Twitter says since they started in 2006, billions of tweets have been created and 55m are sent every day.

The digital archive will include tweets from President Barack Obama on the day he was elected as well as the first tweet from co-founder Jack Dorsey.

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Quiet Sun Puts Europe On Ice

Harsh but fair in the UK (Image: Peter Henry/Flickr/Getty)

From New Scientist:

BRACE yourself for more winters like the last one, northern Europe. Freezing conditions could become more likely: winter temperatures may even plummet to depths last seen at the end of the 17th century, a time known as the Little Ice Age. That's the message from a new study that identifies a compelling link between solar activity and winter temperatures in northern Europe.

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NASA's Orion Capsule To Be Reborn As Escape Pod For Space Station

Orion Reborn A mock-up of Orion lies on the ground after a test set-up chute failed on July 31, 2008 NASA

From Popular Science:

President Obama also promised to commit to a new supersized rocket by 2015.

NASA's Orion crew capsule, which was part of the cancelled Constellation program, has been revived as an escape pod for the International Space Station. A smaller version of the capsule could launch on an Atlas or Delta rocket and eliminate the need to buy a multimillion-dollar Russian Soyuz spacecraft for emergency crew escape, Florida Today reports.

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Small, Ground-Based Telescope Images Three Exoplanets

This image shows the light from three planets orbiting a star 120 light-years away. The planets' star, called HR8799, is located at the spot marked with an 'X.' (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Palomar Observatory)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2010) — Astronomers have snapped a picture of three planets orbiting a star beyond our own using a modest-sized telescope on the ground. The surprising feat was accomplished by a team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using a small portion of the Palomar Observatory's Hale Telescope, north of San Diego.

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Supervolcano: How Humanity Survived Its Darkest Hour

From New Scientist:

THE first sign that something had gone terribly wrong was a deep rumbling roar. Hours later the choking ash arrived, falling like snow in a relentless storm that raged for over two weeks. Despite being more than 2000 kilometres from the eruption, hominins living as far away as eastern India would have felt Toba's fury.

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Giant Natural Particle Accelerator Above Thunderclouds

A lightning researcher at the University of Bath has discovered that during thunderstorms, giant natural particle accelerators can form 40 km above the surface of the Earth. On Wednesday 14th April Dr. Martin Fullekrug will present his new work at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2010) in Glasgow. The image shows a transient airglow or 'sprite' above a thunderstorm in France in September 2009. (Credit: Serge Soula / Oscar van der Velde)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2010) — A lightning researcher at the University of Bath has discovered that during thunderstorms, giant natural particle accelerators can form 40 kilometers above the surface of the Earth.

On April 14, Dr. Martin Fullekrug presented his new work at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2010) in Glasgow.

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Is Earth Shaking More?

From Live Science:

As the numbers of buried or dead continue to climb from today's 6.9-magnitude earthquake in China, an event so close on the heels of the devastating Chile and Haiti earthquakes, you might wonder if Earth is shaking more lately. Perhaps, scientists say, but not unusually so.

Seismic activity may be higher in recent years than the long-term average, but it's still not out of the normal range, the experts contend.

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NSA On The Flash-Media Hunt

From Next Gov.:

Shh, the National Security Agency has developed a software tool that detects thumb drives or other flash media connected to a network, and any federal agency can get a copy free -- no box tops or coupons required.

The NSA provided a brief tantalizing description of its USBDetect 3.0 Computer Network Defense Tool in the unclassified part of its fiscal 2011 budget request.

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Space Storms Could Knock Out National Grid And Sat Navs

From The Telegraph:

Space storms caused by the Sun could knock out power supplies and satellite navigation systems in Britain, claim scientists.

The solar flares and sunspots throw massive clouds of electrically charged gas at the Earth which cause power surges and throw compasses into disarray.

The weather in space has been through an unprecedented calm period in the last century but the researchers believe we could be entering a more volatile period.

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Spectacular Sunsets, Blue Moons And Possibility Of a Gloomy Summer As Volcanic Ash Drifts Across Britain

From The Daily Mail:

The cloud of volcanic ash drifting across the UK from Iceland is set to produce some of the most spectacular sunsets in recent history.

Skywatchers can look forward to stunning light displays and other effects as ash spreads high in the atmosphere. However, experts fear the eruption could spark off a larger volcano nearby, causing a cold and gloomy summer.

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Scientists Reveal Gene-Swapping Technique To Thwart Inherited Diseases

Fertility treatment in action.
Photograph: Zephyr/SPL/Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF

From The Guardian:

Transfer of healthy material from fertilised to donated eggs could stop women passing on incurable illnesses

Scientists today offered new hope for women at risk of passing on certain inherited diseases to their children, in the form of a pioneering technique to move healthy genetic material from fertilised eggs into donated ones.

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Venus 'Still Volcanically Active'

Volcanic peak Idunn Mons. Bright colours indicate recent flow

From The BBC:

Data from Europe's Venus Express probe suggests that Earth's neighbour may still be able to erupt volcanoes.

Relatively young lava flows have been identified on the planet's surface by the spacecraft's infrared instrument.

The flows show up as having a different composition to the surrounding surface material.

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