U.S. Military Supply of Rare Earth Elements Not Secure

From Live Science:

U.S. military technologies such as guided bombs and night vision rely heavily upon rare earth elements supplied by China, and rebuilding an independent U.S. supply chain to wean the country off that foreign dependency could take up to 15 years, according to a new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

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Polluted Old Stars Suggest Earth-like Worlds May Be Common

From Space.com:

Earth-like planets should be a fairly common feature of other solar systems in our galaxy, a new study of stellar senior citizens suggests.

More than 90 percent of stars in the Milky Way, including our own sun, end their lives as a white dwarfs. Traditionally, these dense stellar remains haven't been the first place that astronomers look for signs of planets outside our own solar system. Instead, exoplanet searches have focused on stars like our own sun.

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Mysterious Radio Waves Emitted From Nearby Galaxy

Something in there is producing an unusually regular radio signal
(Image: NASA/ESA/STScI/AURA)

From New Scientist:

There is something strange in the cosmic neighbourhood. An unknown object in the nearby galaxy M82 has started sending out radio waves, and the emission does not look like anything seen anywhere in the universe before.

"We don't know what it is," says co-discoverer Tom Muxlow of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics near Macclesfield, UK.

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First Man On The Moon Neil Armstrong Blasts Obama's Space Plans

Neil Armstrong Blasts Obama’s ‘Devastating’ Nasa Cuts -- Times Online

Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, has launched an unprecedented attack on President Obama’s plans to dismantle Nasa’s manned space exploration programme.

The world’s best-known astronaut, who has traditionally avoided controversy and rarely seeks the limelight despite his feat 41 years ago, warned that Mr Obama risks blasting American space superiority on a “long downhill slide to mediocrity”.

The decision to cancel Constellation, the project to send astronauts to the Moon again by 2020 and Mars by 2030, was “devastating”, Mr Armstrong said in a powerful open letter to the President.

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More News On Protests Against President Obama's NASA Plans

Space Fight: President Obama's Plans for NASA Attacked By Former Astronauts -- ABC News
Moon vets say Obama's NASA cuts would ground U.S. -- USA Today
White House Moves to Placate Critics of its NASA Plan -- Wall Street Journal
Put NASA on a Diet?! Them's Fightin' Words, Mr. President -- Newsweek
Obama's Revised Space Plan: Build Rocket, Save Orion -- NPR

iPad International Launch Delayed As Apple Blames 'Runaway' Demand

Apple's iPad shipped more than half a million units in its first week, the company says. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

From The Guardian:

Apple iPad pre-orders to begin internationally on 10 May, with pricing to be revealed then, after 'surprisingly strong' US orders.

Apple has delayed the international launch of its iPad computer for a month, blaming "surprisingly strong US demand" that has outstripped its ability to produce them.

More than 500,000, it says, have been delivered to retailers and customers in its first week on sale.

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New LOFAR Telescope Network Probes Universe's Low-Frequency Radiation To Look For Oldest Regions And Alien Civilizations

LOFAR's View of The Super Massive Black Hole In The 3C61.1 Galaxy via Alpha Galileo

From The Telegraph:

Until recently, radio astronomers have concentrated almost exclusively on the high-energy radiation streaming in towards Earth from exotic stellar bodies like pulsars, quasars, and super-massive black holes. But now, a new European observatory called the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) has begun releasing data on the low-energy radiation that permeates the Universe.

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The Woman Photographer Who Braves Temperatures Of MINUS 20 To Take Stunning Pictures Of Northern Lights

Linda Drake uses a variety of different camera exposure times to photograph the spectacular lights

From The Daily Mail:

A photographer has captured some of the most stunning examples of the Northern Lights ever seen.

Travelling each year to Northern Manitoba in Canada to capture the Aurora Borealis, Linda Drake braves temperatures of minus 20 degrees in search of that elusive perfect shot.

Making the pilgrimage to just south of the Arctic Circle, in March each year, the 40-year-old has developed a passion for the heavenly phenomenon.

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'Climategate' Panel Set To Report

From The BBC:

The second of three reviews into hacked climate e-mails from the University of East Anglia (UEA) is set to be released later.

It has examined scientific papers published over 20 years by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the heart of the e-mail controversy.

The panel was nominated by the Royal Society, and climate sceptics forecast it would defend establishment science.

But the BBC understands the panel has taken a hard look at CRU methodology.

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Twitter To Have Paid Tweets Show Up In Searches

From ABC News:

Twitter introduces tweets paid for by advertisers, to show up first in search results.

Twitter announced Tuesday that it is introducing advertising by allowing companies to pay to have their messages show up first in searches on its site.

The debut of "Promoted Tweets" comes as Twitter increasingly faces questions about how it can turn its wide usage into profits.

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Inexpensive Highly Efficient Solar Cells Possible

Researchers have come up with solutions for two problems that, for the last twenty years, have been hampering the development of efficient and affordable solar cells. (Credit: iStockphoto/Kyu Oh)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 12, 2010) — Thanks to two technologies developed by Professor Benoît Marsan and his team at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) Chemistry Department, the scientific and commercial future of solar cells could be totally transformed. Professor Marsan has come up with solutions for two problems that, for the last twenty years, have been hampering the development of efficient and affordable solar cells.

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One Mystery of Sandstorm Lightning Explained

From Live Science:

Sandstorms can generate spectacular lightning displays, but how they do so is a mystery.

By unlocking the secrets of how sparks come to fly in these storms as researchers are now doing, scientists could help grapple with all kinds of problems, from charged particle clouds that can cause devastating explosions in the food, drug and coal industries to charged dust that could obscure vital solar panels on missions to the moon or Mars.

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Twitter Reveals Business Model

From Technology Review:

"Promoted Tweets" will bring ads into the stream of real-time conversation.

At long last, Twitter has announced its business model. The company has grown explosively since its launch in 2007 and there has been intense speculation about how it could make its popular service profitable. The plan is to use an advertising model that it calls "Promoted Tweets."

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The Apollo Hoax Theories

Neil Armstrong/Keystone/Getty Images

From The Independent:

It is 40 years since the drama of the Apollo 13 mission turned an aborted mission to the moon from potential disaster into a celebrated recovery.

But doubts still linger about the moon landings. 9/11 and Kennedy aside, no event in world history has generated quite so many conspiracy theories than the Apollo moon landings. Do they stand up? Here are the best reasons why it couldn’t have happened, and the rebuttals. Of course, you may disagree.

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Meet The New Head Of DARPA

LEADER Regina Dugan of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Michael Temchine for The New York Times

New Force Behind Agency of Wonder -- New York Times

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is different from other federal agencies. For one thing, the agency, known as Darpa, created the Internet (really). For another, it is probably the only agency ever to offer a $40,000 prize for a balloon hunt, a contest that was inspired by Regina Dugan, a 47-year-old expert in mine detection, who took over last summer as its director.

Dr. Dugan, who has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, is the first woman to be the director of Darpa, and those who know her say she has a knack for inspiring, and indeed insisting on, creative thinking.

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Copyright Violation Alert Ransomware In The Wild

From ZNET:

A currently ongoing ransomware campaign is using a novel approach to extort money from end users whose PCs have been locked down.

By pretending to be the fake ICPP Foundation (icpp-online.com), the ransomware locks down the user’s desktop issuing a “Copyright violation: copyrighted content detected” message, which lists torrent files found on the infected PC, and forces the user to pay $400 for the copyright holder’s fine, emphasizing on the fact that “the maximum penalties can be five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines.

More details on the campaign:

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Can Mozilla Be Bigger Than Facebook?

From CNET:

Mozilla has made a name for itself by taking on Microsoft Internet Explorer in the browser market, claiming as much as 30 percent of the global market with its open-source Firefox browser. Mozilla's second act, however, promises to be much more difficult, with increased competition from Microsoft but also from open-source competitors like Google Chrome.

What should Mozilla do next?

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Pluto Joined By Up To 50 More Dwarf Planets

Comparative sizes of four dwarf planets, which may be joined by up to 50 more objects. Credit: Hubble Space Telescope

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: The status of former planet Pluto has taken another blow, with new research suggesting up to 50 known objects may also meet the criteria to be dwarf planets.

To be labelled as a dwarf planet, an object must meet two criteria, as determined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU): they must be 'nearly round' and they must orbit the Sun.

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Does Stress Feed Cancer?

PUSHING IT: Stress is linked indirectly to the immune system's anti-tumor defenses, but it can also affect anoikis--a type of cell death that cancer cells bypass. iStockphoto

From Scientific American:

A new study shows stress hormones make it easier for malignant tumors to grow and spread.

A little stress can do us good—it pushes us to compete and innovate. But chronic stress can increase the risk of diseases such as depression, heart disease and even cancer. Studies have shown that stress might promote cancer indirectly by weakening the immune system's anti-tumor defense or by encouraging new tumor-feeding blood vessels to form. But a new study published April 12 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation shows that stress hormones, such as adrenaline, can directly support tumor growth and spread.

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Astronauts Take 3rd, Final Spacewalk; Valve Stuck

From ABC News:

Astronauts take 3rd, final spacewalk to finish installing tank; stuck valve threatens cooling.

A pair of spacewalking astronauts finished installing a fresh storage tank outside the International Space Station on Tuesday, but a stuck valve was threatening to jeopardize half of the cooling system.

No sooner had Rick Mastracchio hooked up the fluid valves for the new ammonia tank on the third and final spacewalk of shuttle Discovery's flight, then flight controllers encountered the valve trouble in a separate pressurizing unit.

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40 Yard Dash: Average Dude Vs Pro Athlete

Video from the NFL Combine showing just how fast prospective NFL players can run compared to normal people.

It is almost unbelievable how quickly Jacoby Ford (the top performer in the 40 this year) covers that distance.

Above video from Kottke.org

Hat Tip: Geek Press