Skydiver Aims To Smash World Record

Skydiver Aims To Smash Record, Sound Barrier In 23-Mile Jump -- Playbook/Wired

Later this summer, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner will ascend to 120,000 feet in a pressurized capsule and, wearing only a spacesuit, jump.

As he plummets 23 miles in the highest skydive ever, Baumgartner will become the first person to break the sound barrier in free fall. That’s the plan, anyway. To even attempt this will expose him to many challenges, including the risk that water in his body could vaporize. But one challenge in particular is foremost in everyone’s mind: What happens when Baumgartner encounters the shock waves that invariably occur when something exceeds the speed of sound?

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My Comment: I wish him luck.

3D Mapping Will Allow Us To Look Inside The Human Brain

The 3D maps will allow us to see 'inside' the workings of the brain for the first time, claim the scientists

Land Of Dreams: Harvard Scientists Map Most Complicated Terrain In The Universe - The Inside Of The Human Brain -- Daily Mail

* Magnetic resonance scanner builds first 3D interior maps of brain
* Could allow treatment of brain disorders
* Scans up until now 'have not shown the real brain,' say researchers

Harvard scientists have developed hi-tech new methods to explore inside the human brain using magnetic resonance scanning.

Professor Jan Wedeen claims that the rainbow-coloured scans offer the first real insight into the pathways of the human brain's 100 billion cells - and how it works.

‘The brain we’ve been looking at with conventional scans all these years is not the real brain,' says Wedeeen. 'We’re just seeing a shadow of its surfaces.’

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My Comment: This is cool stuff.

Venus To Cross The Face Of The Sun Tomorrow

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

Venus To Put On Sun Spectacular -- BBC

Planet Venus is set to move across the face of the Sun as viewed from Earth.

The more than six-and-a-half-hour transit, which starts just after 22:00 GMT (23:00 BST) on Tuesday is a very rare astronomical phenomenon that will not be witnessed again until 2117.

Observers will position themselves in northwest America, the Pacific, and East Asia to catch the whole event.

But some part of the spectacle will be visible across a much broader swathe of Earth's surface, weather permitting.

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Update: You'll have to get up early on Wednesday to catch Venus transit across the face of the sun - for the last time in 105 years -- Daily Mail

My Comment: So I will have to wait until 2117 for the next event. Hmmmm .... I have doubts that I will still be around .... better pray for good weather tomorrow.

Meet ROBOT-Rx

Meet ROBOT-Rx, The Robot Pharmacist Doling Out 350 Million Doses Per Year -- Singularity Hub

Come to think of it, why do we still have pharmacists? I mean, how hard is it to count by “twos”? I’m just kidding of course. You probably want that extra pair of human eyes to check on your prescription. But after the pharmacist has double-checked the prescription and answered your questions, why not let robots count the pills out for them?

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My Comment: It's only a matter of time before 'robot pharmacists' become standard issue.

The Future Of Drone Warfare

A Drone-Eat-Drone World -- Nick Turse, Asia Times

United States military documents tell the story vividly. In the Gulf of Guinea, off the coast of West Africa, an unmanned mini-submarine deployed from the USS Freedom detects an "anomaly": another small remotely-operated sub with welding capabilities tampering with a major undersea oil pipeline.

The American submarine's "smart software" classifies the action as a possible threat and transmits the information to an unmanned drone flying overhead. The robot plane begins collecting intelligence data and is soon circling over a nearby

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My Comment: Expect budget cuts to put a damper on this future military/drone environment.

Are Apps The Future of Book Publishing?

(Photo credit: John Blyberg)

Are Apps The Future of Book Publishing? -- Forbes

We’re at the dawn of the tablet era now. Earlier this month, Apple sold 3 million of its new iPad during the opening weekend, with some analysts expecting over 60 million of the tablets to be sold worldwide. What’s more, e-book readers are selling even more briskly than tablets. People are using those e-readers, too. On Amazon.com, books for its Kindle outsell its paper books.

What’s more, the explosion of e-books is putting pressure on publishers between demands for price cuts on one hand, and competition from independent authors like Amanda Hocking, who earned over $2 million selling e-books on her own before signing with a major publisher.

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My Comment: Are apps the future of book publishing .... well .... readers are using them so I would have to assume that the answer is yes.

Touchscreen Troops

The Daily Exclusive: Touchscreen Troops -- The Daily

Soldiers to increasingly tap military apps on Pentagon-issued iPads, smartphones.

Modern warfare? There’s an app for that.

Well, not from Apple, but there are a handful from the Pentagon — and more to come. They’re being downloaded on tablets and smartphones to help combat troops complete their missions.

Right now, in transports and fighters, pilots and navigators are on Air Force-issued iPads, checking their orders and reviewing their flight plans.

And this summer, the Army is putting Droids in the hands of grunts headed to Afghanistan so they can receive streaming surveillance video from drones, scan their surroundings for threats, call for fire support and request medical evacuations. Sailors and Marines are connected, too.

Though not a nuclear warhead or an M-16 rifle, the smartphone and the tablet are indeed weapons — helping the warfighter defeat the enemy.

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My Comment: My only concern with these new developments is on the possibility of information overload. But for the moment .... the U.S. military is gong-ho to push this program.

How Brick-And-Mortar Bookstore Thrives Because Of Amazon

The Man Who Took On Amazon And Saved A Bookstore -- Forbes

Certain business ideas seem doomed to fail. You can walk into a restaurant or retail chain and know instantly that its days are numbered.

That’s the gut sense I had when I learned that someone new had bought the Harvard Book Store – a comforting oasis for bibliophiles and casual browsers – just a few blocks from my office in Cambridge. In a town where independent bookstores have been folding faster than Starbucks can open coffee shops in China, this naïve optimist embarked on his new venture in the dark days of the recession, under the shadow of Amazon, and as e-books began their zenith rise.

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My Comment: An exception in the trend of closing bookstores.

Facebook vs. Google

US Navy Will Try To Solve The Riddle Of Amelia Earhart's Disappearance

The accepted wisdom was that Earhart's aircraft had simply run out of fuel and crashed into the ocean on July 2, 1937, as she searched for Howland Island

US Navy Prepares Mission To Solve Riddle Of Amelia Earhart's Death -- The Telegraph

Seventy-five years after Amelia Earhart sealed her place in flying history as the first woman to attempt to circumnavigate the world, the US Navy is preparing a mission to solve the riddle of her death in the Pacific.

One of the most enduring mysteries of the annals of aviation, is what happened after Miss Earhart last radioed from her Lockheed Model 10E "Electra" that she was unable to locate an airstrip for landing.

The accepted wisdom was that Earhart's aircraft had simply run out of fuel and crashed into the ocean on July 2, 1937, as she searched for Howland Island.

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My Comment: I wish them the best.

Has Google Gone To 'War' Against The Chinese Government?

Sly Google Wields The Knife In Chinese Internet Censorship Tussle -- Christian Science Monitor

Google has introduced a new feature for Chinese users that will pull back the curtain on Chinese Internet government censorship.

This week the search engine giant Google kept a polite smile on its face as it stuck its shiv in up to the hilt, introducing a feature to its Chinese site that tells users exactly when the censors have blocked a search word for being too “sensitive.”

The Chinese government keeps its list of banned search terms secret; Google is now revealing them. But not once did Google Vice President Alan Eustace mention the word “censorship” in his blog introducing the new feature.

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My Comment: This is effective .... by revealing what Chinese authorities are censoring, Google is .... essentially .... embarrassing the authorities. My prediction .... the Chinese government is going to react quickly .... they are losing face, and for them this is unacceptable.

Bringing Computing Into Our Cells

Chemical Circuit A chemical chip can deliver a neurotransmitter like acetylcholine, which enables chemical control of muscles. Linköping University, Sweden

An Integrated Circuit Made of Ions Could Bring Computing Into Your Cells -- Popular Science

The human body isn't a metal machine, but it's still plenty complicated, and regulating it like a machine is tough to pull off. That's why a new discovery by Klas Tybrandt, a doctoral student in Organic Electronics at Linköping University, Sweden, is exciting: he's developed the first integrated chemical chip, similar to silicon-based electronics, but for biologic material.

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The Day When The Milky Way And Andromeda Crash Together

The Milky Way and Andromeda Crash Together -- Popular Science

First, the bad news: In four billion years it's going to get a lot more crowded around here. The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are on a collision course. The good news is that a new video from NASA shows how it'll go down.

It's been suggested for some time that the two galaxies might have it in for each other, but today NASA says they can "predict with certainty" that Andromeda, which is still 2.5 million light years away but heading toward us at 250,000 miles per hour, will collide with the Milky Way because of the mutual pull of their gravity.

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My Comment: Cool.

Will Divers Finally Get To The Bottom Of The Baltic Sea 'UFO' Mystery?

Unidentified treasure: Shipwreck divers are perplexed by the oddly-shaped object that they found at the bottom of the Baltic Sea

Will Divers Finally Get To The Bottom Of The Baltic Sea 'UFO' Mystery? Team Heads Into The Abyss To Discover The Origins Of Strange, 400-Metre 'Millennium Falcon' Object -- Daily Mail

Since June last year, the strange shape at the bottom of the Baltic Sea has caused so much speculation.

Sonar pictures showed a massive, metallic cylinder with a 60 metre diameter and a 400 metre-long tail resting about 300 feet below the Baltic Sea - and no-one knows what it is.

It must be man-made, or a sonar anomaly - the alternative, perhaps, is that it comes from a universe far, far, away, as its startling likeness to the Millennium Falcon ship from the Star Wars saga implies.

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My Comment: Just imagine ..... what if it is a space ship? Is so .... imagine the world scramble for ownership and retrieval.

President Obama Ordered Cyber Attacks Against Iran

The report comes from David E. Sanger, the Chief Washington correspondent at The New York Times and author of the upcoming book "Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power". Naked Security

Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran -- New York Times

WASHINGTON — From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.

Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.

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More News On President Obama Ordering Cyber Attacks Against Iran

Barack Obama 'ordered Stuxnet cyber attack on Iran' -- The Telegraph
Obama stepped up cyberattacks on Iran: report -- AFP
Report: Obama ordered wave of cyberattacks on Iran -- Yahoo News/ABC News
Obama continued, accelerated use of Bush-era Stuxnet computer attacks on Iran -- FOX News
Obama Ordered Stuxnet Cyber Attack Against Iran, Initiative Code-Named 'Olympic Games': Report -- International Business Times
Report: Obama Ordered Cyber Attacks on Iran -- Atlantic Wire
Obama ordered increased cyber attacks on Iran -- The Australian
US unleashed Stuxnet cyber war on Iran to appease Israel – report -- RT
Report: Obama secretly ordered cyber attacks on Iran's nuclear program -- Haaretz
Obama Ordered Devastating Cyberattacks Against Iran -- Gizmodo
Report: Obama Ordered Stuxnet Attacks on Iran -- PC World
Obama 'gave full backing to Stuxnet attack on Iran' -- New Scientist
US And Israel ‘Spawned Stuxnet’ -- Tech Week
Administration officials say Stuxnet was America’s first cyber weapon -- The Tech Herald
Stuxnet: How USA and Israel created anti-Iran virus, and then lost control of it -- Naked Security

Why The U.N. Should Not Takeover The Internet

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell warns a House committee that Google, iTunes, Facebook, and Netflix could face new international taxes. (Credit: U.S. House of Representatives)

U.N. Takeover Of The Internet Must Be Stopped, U.S. Warns -- CNet

A U.N. summit later this year in Dubai could lead to a new international regime of censorship, taxes, and surveillance, warn Democrats, Republicans, the Internet Society, and father of the Internet Vint Cerf.

Democratic and Republican government officials warned this morning that a United Nations summit in December will lead to a virtual takeover of the Internet if proposals from China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are adopted.

It was a rare point of bipartisan agreement during an election year: a proposal that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin described last year as handing the U.N. "international control of the Internet" must be stopped.

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My Comment: Every government that has tried to regulate and/or limit the use of the internet within their own country has had to face a backlash from their own citizens. As far as these governments are concerned .... having an international body like the United Nations doing their dirty work is far more preferable than doing it themselves.

Plan X — The Future of Cyberwarfare ‎

Plan X: Pentagon's Blueprint For Full-Fledged Cyberwar -- RT

The wheels of the war machine are ever turning inside the Pentagon, but the Defense Department’s latest endeavor won’t involve fighter jets and armored tanks. The DoD is putting aside billions to enhance its cyberwar capabilities.

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, is turning towards the private sector and America’s next generation of computer wiz-kids to recruit forces for its next war. A report released Thursday by the Washington Post reveals that DARPA is looking to invest $1.54 billion during the next five years to up its online abilities, with $110 million going directly to a program dubbed Plan X, but unlike before it won’t be budgeted necessarily for thwarting acts of cyberterrorism. Instead the Pentagon is itching to ensure that America can carry out an offensive cyberwar on other nations rather than just readying the US to defend itself against a similar assault from abroad.

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More News On Plan -X

With Plan X, Pentagon seeks to spread U.S. military might to cyberspace -- Washington Post
Pentagon’s Blueprint For Full-Fledged Cyberwar -- Eurasia Review
Plan X — The Future of Cyberwarfare -- Lawfare
DARPA Cranks Up Cyber Effort with “Plan X” -- Heritage

After 15 Months In Orbit The Supersecret X-37B Is To Return To Earth

After 15 Months In Orbit, Secret Space Plane Finally Returning To Earth -- Danger Room

The U.S. military’s secret space plane is preparing to return from its second mission after an incredible 453 days in orbit (as of today). The robotic X-37B, which resembles a miniature space shuttle, is due to land at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California sometime in early to mid-June, depending on weather and other technical factors.

“The men and women of Team Vandenberg are ready to execute safe landing operations anytime and at a moment’s notice,” Col. Nina Armagno, commander of the Air Force’s 30th Space Wing, said in a statement.

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More News On The Upcoming Return Of The X-37B

Secret Air Force Spaceplane Coming Back To Earth In June -- Red Orbit
Vandenberg AFB prepares for return of US military space plane after more than a year in orbit -- Washington Post/AP
Vandenberg AFB readies for X-37B landing -- Flight Global
US's secret space plane to return to Earth in a month -- Herald Sun
Air Force's mini space shuttle prepares for landing -- Space Flight Now
Air Force's Secretive X-37B Space Plane Will Land Soon -- Space.com
X-37B Spaceplane Finishes Its Secret Mission, Prepares to Return to Earth -- Geek System
U.S. Air Force Space Plane Landing Targeted for June -- Space News
U.S. military space plane coming home next month -- Examiner

Does A Fever Combat Cancer Cells?

Feed A Fever, Starve A Cancer? -- Future Pundit

Have modern sterile environments and antibiotics boosted the rate of cancer? Do we need to work ourselves into a fevered pitch once or twice a year?

There is an inverse relationship between febrile infection and the risk of malignancies. Interferon gamma (IFN-γ) plays an important role in fever induction and its expression increases with incubation at fever-range temperatures. Therefore, the genetic polymorphism of IFN-γ may modify the association of febrile infection with breast cancer risk.

Why? An immune system turned up to kill off invading bacteria might also react more vigorously to attack aberrant cells in your body that have mutated only part of the way toward becoming cancerous. Cells that have mutated all the way into becoming cancerous often have mutations that cause them to excrete substances that suppress the immune system. So vaccines against well developed cancers have fared poorly. But if the immune system could be stimulated into attacking pre-cancerous cells at much earlier stages then in some cases cancer could be prevented.

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My Comment: Does fever hold anti-cancer effects .... mainly influencing our immune system to eliminate per-cancerous cells. More research is clearly needed.

Windows 8 Release Preview

Windows 8 Release Preview: Not Ready for Prime Time, but Closer -- Time

For all the ways in which Windows 8 is a bold departure from its predecessors, it’s following a road map to release that’s very much like the one Microsoft has used for years. Last September, the company showed the new version off in public for the first time and let developers get their hands on a very early version. In February, it followed up with a further-along Consumer Preview which any interested party could download for free, install and use.

Starting today, Microsoft is offering a Windows 8 Release Preview — an update to the Consumer Preview — that’s even closer to completion. It’s the latest sign that Windows 8 is on schedule, and while Microsoft isn’t saying when it plans to ship the operating system, the smart money says it’ll show up on new PCs and as an upgrade by the fall of this year.

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My Comment: They appear to be on track .... and yes .... I can easily see myself using Windows 8 by the end of this year.