Gravitational Lensing Helps Redraw the Map of Space

The observations show that dark matter in the Universe is distributed as a network of gigantic dense (white) and empty (dark) regions, where the largest white regions are about the size of several Earth moons on the sky. Van Waerbeke / Heymans / CFHTLens collaboration

A Cosmic Illusion: Gravitational Lensing Helps Redraw the Map of Space -- Time

You can hardly accuse Albert Einstein of being short on imagination. The man who invented General Relativity and helped invent quantum theory probably had more creative thoughts in an hour than most folks have in a year. But one of Einstein's more intriguing scientific papers, which appeared in Science in 1936, wasn't really his idea in the first place. It came instead from a Czech electrical engineer named Rudi Mandl, who was intrigued by one of relativity's implications.

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Major Websites Preparing To Go Dark On Wednesday

Wikipedia and other websites plan to go dark in protest. Reuters

SOPA Protest Nears Zero Hour -- Politico

Internet companies and activists are hoping to join the Arab Spring and other online democracy movements by taking an estimated 7,000 websites offline Wednesday to send a message to Washington: Don’t pass a pair of anti-piracy bills.

The websites that have announced plans to go dark include Wikipedia, Mozilla, Reddit and Wordpress, but some of the most visited websites are conspicuous in their absence.

And supporters of the copyright bills dismissed the blackout as a “stunt.”

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My Comment: To understand the issues that are involved, go here. As for myself .... unless Blogger goes offline .... I will be blogging tomorrow.

Massacre In The Hive

Massacre In The Hive: Amazing Footage Of 30 Giant Japanese Hornets Slaughtering 30,000 Tiny Honeybees To Eat Their Young -- Daily Mail

Tens of thousands are dead, hundreds more of the dying lie writhing on the battlefield, powerless to protect their children.

These horrifying and yet fascinating scenes are the highlights of a three-hour battle between just 30 giant Japanese hornets and 30,000 European honeybees.

The video, from a National Geographic documentary called Hornets From Hell, shows a full-scale attack on the honeybees' comb in order that the hornets can get at their larvae.

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My Comment: I got the chills from just watching the video.

The Hunt for Exomoons Is Heating Up

An artist's impression of a hypothetical exomoon in orbit around a planet in another planetary system. Dan Durda

Forget Exoplanets: The Hunt for Exomoons Is Heating Up

The universe seems almost infinitely reductive: our galaxy rotates around a central hub, planets orbit their planet stars, moons orbit their parent planets, and the odd moonlet may even orbit a moon.

Almost from the moment astronomers began finding planets around distant stars, they thus began talking about the moons that might orbit those alien worlds. It wasn't that they had any hope of discovering something as tiny as a moon: the smallest things they could find at the time were giant planets like Jupiter. But if a Jupiter happened to orbit in its star's Goldilocks Zone, where temperatures were relatively balmy, and if that Jupiter happened to have a moon about the size of Earth — not impossible, surely — then that hypothetical moon might have a chance of harboring life. That's a lot of ifs, which made talk of so-called exomoons seem like more of a marketing gimmick designed to gin up public interest in exoplanet science than a serious area of research.

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The First Ever Saturn-Like Exoplanet Is Found

A Saturn-Like Ringed Planet, 420 Light-Years Away Michael Osadciw/University of Rochester

Found: The First Ever Saturn-Like Exoplanet Surrounded By Orbital Rings -- Popular Science

The hits just keep on coming out of Austin this week as the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society rolls on. Researchers there have announced the discovery of the first Saturn-like ringed object outside our solar system, documented when researchers were trying to diagnose the cause of a strange eclipsing effect emanating from a nearby star.

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An Innovative Way To Collect Solar Energy

13-year-old Aidan Dwyer developed a new way to collect solar energy, and along the way sparked a fierce debate among scholars and scientists. He joins the News Hub to tell his story. Photo: Claudio Papapietro for The Wall Street Journal

A Youngster's Bright Idea Is Something New Under The Sun -- Wall Street Journal

Aidan Dwyer Took a Leaf from the Trees and Electrified International Debate

NORTHPORT, N.Y.—A new way of collecting solar energy has polarized scientists around the world and ignited fierce debate on the Internet, where the innovator in question has been called everything from an alien to the agent of a global conspiracy.

Maybe a better title would be an intellectual Hannah Montana. That's because the scientist, Aidan Dwyer, is 13 years old.

This past summer, Aidan won a national science competition with what seemed to be a bright idea: His research appeared to show that solar panels arrayed like the leaves on a tree collect sunlight more efficiently than traditional setups.

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Google's Chrome Poised To Become World's Most Popular Web Browser

Over the past year, Internet Explorer fell from 46 per cent of the worldwide market to 38.5 per cent. In the same period, Chrome rose from 15.68 per cent to 27.27 per cent, overtaking rival Firefox in the process

Google's Chrome Poised To Become World's Most Popular Web Browser This Year, Overtaking Internet Explorer -- Daily Mail

* Internet Explorer falls to 38.5 per cent in 2011
* Chrome soars from 15.68 per cent to 27.27 per cent
* Will overtake IE in 2012 if current trend continues

Google's fast, simple Chrome browser will move ahead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer by the end of this year if current trends continue, according to research from research firm StatCounter.

Over the past year, Internet Explorer fell from 46 per cent of the worldwide market to 38.5 per cent.

In the same period, Google Chrome rose from 15.68 per cent to 27.27 per cent, overtaking rival Firefox in the process.

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A New Design For Robots

This photo illustration shows an agama lizard with the Tailbot robot. (Discovery Channel 4D Anatomy Model, 2008 Fame Master Ent. Ltd.). Thomas Libby, Evan Chang-Siu and Pauline Jennings. Courtesy of PolyPEDAL Lab & CiBER/UC Berkeley

Should We Design Robots To Be More Like Velociraptors? -- Christian Science Monitor

Adding a long tails to a robot to stabilize its body could lead to far more agile search-and-rescue machines, a new study reveals.

Meat-eating dinosaurs like Velociraptor may have been quite the acrobats, using their tails to land aerial maneuvers safely, say scientists studying today's leaping lizards.

Long-tailed robots built as part of this work could help inspire a new generation of maneuverable search-and-rescue droids, the researchers add.

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Google Search Home Page Revamped

Google's pull-down menus should help highlight the firm's non-core search services to users.

Google Search Home Page Revamp Promotes Other Services -- BBC

Google is rolling out one of its biggest home page changes to date.

The revamp strips its front page of the black bar that currently runs horizontally along its top, and replaces it with a grey logo.

When clicked or highlighted, it reveals seven alternative services to the site's search page with an option to reveal a further eight.

Analysts said the move was designed to promote more of the firm's businesses without cluttering its webpage.

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My Comment: This is going to take some getting use to.

Windows XP Still Dominates The Web

Ten Years Later, Windows XP Still Dominates The Web -- CNN Money

And in the Apple market, Lion is still trailing two-year-old Snow Leopard.

In its final monthly report for 2011, NetApplications offers a window on the shifting fates of the various flavors of Microsoft (MSFT) Windows and Mac OS X that show up at its 40,000 clients' websites.

As a rule, creaky old legacy systems dominate.

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My Comment: It took me a few months to get over Windows 3.1 in favor of Windows 95. Such is the life of software.

'Buffing' Your Brain

Buff Your Brain -- Daily Beast/Newsweek

Read more. Learn a language. Get some sleep! Sharon Begley reports getting a bigger brain is easier—and more fun—than you think.

Brain training to sharpen memory. Aerobic exercise to preserve gray matter. Meditation to hone connections between reason and emotion.

It all sounds great, but there’s something that has long bothered us about the growing number of studies pinpointing ways to buff your brain: they don’t go far enough. Sure, exercises to improve memory are better for your brain than, say, watching reality TV, but the most you’re going to gain is more reliable access to knowledge already scattered around your cerebral cortex. If the information isn’t in there, no amount of brain training will tell you how the Federal Reserve system functions, why the Confederacy lost the Civil War, the significance of Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon, or why Word just crashed.

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Is A Super-Volcano In The Heart Of Europe About To Erupt?

If the Laacher See eruption is as powerful as the last one, volcanic material could land over 600 miles away

Is A Super-Volcano Just 390 Miles From London About To Erupt? -- Daily Mail

* It's similar in size to Mount Pinatubo, which in 1991 gave us the biggest eruption of the 20th century
* Billions of tons of ash and magma would be ejected
* Southern England would be covered in ash

A sleeping super-volcano in Germany is showing worrying signs of waking up.

It's lurking just 390 miles away underneath the tranquil Laacher See lake near Bonn and is capable of ejecting billions of tons of magma.

This monster erupts every 10 to 12,000 years and last went off 12,900 years ago, so it could blow at any time.

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My Comment: The awesome power of mother nature always gives me pause.

Four Industries Being Targeted By Apple

Brian Snyder / Reuters

Four Industries Apple Can Disrupt In The Near Future -- Time Techland

Tim Bajarin is the president of Creative Strategies Inc., a technology industry analysis and market intelligence firm in Silicon Valley.

Over the last 10 years, Apple has done a rather amazing job of disrupting quite a few industries. By my account, it has dramatically impacted the PC, tablet, consumer electronics, telecom, music and TV industries in a big way. And I believe that Apple is on the cusp of disrupting at least four more major industries in the next three to five years.

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My Comment: Only 4?

Is This The Year of Cold Fusion?

2012: The Year of Cold Fusion? -- Forbes

Well, there goes 2011, a year that was, to say the least, a mixed bag.

In the tech world it has been an interesting year. The Large Hadron Collider has, so far, failed to find evidence of the Higgs Boson (boo!) but at least it didn’t, as some people had feared, create a black hole that swallowed the earth (hooray!). Biological research produced promising results regarding antiviral drugs that may cure the common cold (hooray!) but a cure for cancer and HIV stills seems a long way away (boo!).

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My Comment: Unfortunately .... we are still a long way off.

How Can I Track My Stolen Gadget?

Laptop LoJack Nigel Buchanan

Ask a Geek: How Can I Track My Stolen Gadget? -- Popular Science

Thieves make off with millions of dollars’ worth of laptops and mobile devices every year. Most stolen gadgets go unrecovered, but tracking software can help. The software runs in the background of the operating system or, with some services, the boot-level layer, which makes detecting the tracker much more difficult. Services like Prey provide free software for up to three laptops or Android devices. BlackBerry, iPhone or iPad owners can use GadgetTrak (from $4).

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Great White Sharks Hunting Cape Fur Sseals Off The Coast Of Cape Town, South Africa

A seal tries to outmanoeuvre a great white shark, seconds before it becomes lunch. The tiny Cape fur seal is dwarfed by the enormous shark as it hunts off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. These images taken by wildlife photographer David Jenkins show the constant struggle for survival for the animals that live on Seal Island in False Bay where around 12,000 seal pups are born each November and December. Taken over three years, the photos illustrate exactly why great whites are considered one of the world's most efficient predators. Picture: Specialist Stock / Barcroft Media

CSN Editor: A cool gallery of pictures. The link is here.

101 Gadgets That Changed The World

101. Duct Tape
NASA astronauts have used it to make repairs on the moon and in space. The MythBusters built a boat and held a car together with the stuff. Brookhaven National Laboratory fixed their particle accelerator with it. And enthusiasts have used it to make prom dresses and wallets. You might say it's a material, not a gadget, but trust us: Duct tape is the ultimate multitool.

101 Gadgets That Changed The World -- Popular Mechanics

The alarm clock. The personal computer. The smartphone. The radio. You know the greatest gadgets of all time (and you’ve probably owned most of them), but which has changed the world more than any other? To make our list of 101, a gadget had to be something you could hold in your hands, mechanical or electronic, and a mass-produced personal item. The rest was up to the judges. Check out our selections, and watch the 101 Gadgets TV special on History, premiering June 15. Then, let the debate begin.

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My Comment: They are all indispensable in today's world.

A Helicopter Drone For The U.S. Army

(Credit: U.S. Army)

US Army Unveils 1.8 Gigapixel Camera Helicopter Drone -- BBC

New helicopter-style drones with 1.8 gigapixel colour cameras are being developed by the US Army.

The army said the technology promised "an unprecedented capability to track and monitor activity on the ground".

A statement added that three of the sensor-equipped drones were due to go into service in Afghanistan in either May or June.

Boeing built the first drones, but other firms can bid to manufacture others.

"These aircraft will deploy for up to one full year as a way to harness lessons learned and funnel them into a program of record," said Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Munster, product manager at the US Army's Unmanned Aerial System Modernization unit.

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More News On The U.S. Army`s Newest Helicopter Drone

US deploys 1.8 gigapixel helicopter surveillance drones to Afghanistan -- The Register
Hummingbird robo-drone gets 1.8-gigapixel camera -- CNet
New spy drone has 1.8 gigapixel camera -- Extreme Tech
US Army's A160 Hummingbird drone-copter to don 1.8 gigapixel camera -- Endgadget
Army to deploy vertical take-off UAS -- www.Army.mil

Massive Solar Storm Heading Our Way

It's coming this way: The CME, seen by Nasa's STEREO-B spacecraft, can be seen blasting out from the Sun on the right-hand side (circled)

Massive Solar Storm 'Could Knock Out Radio Signals' Over Next Three Days, Warn Scientists -- Daily Mail

Skywatchers will be hoping for clear skies from today because particles from a recent solar storm will slam into Earth and produce amazing Northern Lights, or auroras.

On the downside, experts expect radio blackouts for a few days, caused by the radiation from the flare – or coronal mass ejection (CME) – causing magnetic storms.

The flare is part of a larger increase in activity in the Sun, which runs in 11-year cycles. It is expected to peak around 2013.

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Where Science And The Search For Understanding Can Produce Mankind's Worst Nightmare

This transmission electron micrograph taken at a magnification of 150,000x, reveals the ultrastructural details of an avian influenza A (H5N1) virion, pictured by the United States government's Centre for Disease Control.

Studies Of Deadly H5N1 Bird Flu Mutations Test Scientific Ethics -- L.A. Times

Dutch scientists have created a version of the deadly H5N1 bird flu that's easily transmitted. In an unprecedented move, a U.S. board asks that some details of the research not be published.

In a top-security lab in the Netherlands, scientists guard specimens of a super-killer influenza that slays half of those it infects and spreads easily from victim to victim.

It is a beast long feared by influenza experts, but it didn't come from nature. The scientists made it themselves.

Their noxious creation could help prevent catastrophe in the battle against the deadly H5N1 bird flu that has ravaged duck and chicken flocks across Asia and elsewhere since the mid-1990s but has mostly left our species alone — for one crucial reason. Though H5N1 kills with brutality when it takes hold in a human, it infects extremely rarely and doesn't go on to easily spread between people.

Public health officials have long fretted that the virus may one day find a way to do so.

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Previous Post: A Bioterror Weapon That Can Easily Kill Billions

My Comment: From what I have been reading, this genetically engineered virus is incredibly lethal (60%). And while the desire is to now limit it`s findings, the sad fact is that we are now faced with a situation in which "Pandora`s Box" has been opened, and there are now too many people who are aware of its findings.