Human evolution kicks into high gear – “Researchers debate whether our species is growing apart or together…”

Two-step chemical process turns raw biomass into biofuel – “Taking a chemical approach, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a two-step method to convert the cellulose in raw biomass into a promising biofuel. The process, which is described in the Wednesday, Feb. 11 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, is unprecedented in its use of untreated, inedible biomass as the starting material…”

Ten of Microsoft’s Ten Thousand Patents – “Microsoft is making hay today over the news that it’s received its ten thousandth patent (which you can see here). I’m kind of addicted to rummaging through Google Patents and finding old filings with drawings that are fun for one reason or another–either because they’re of things we’re all familiar with, or because they depict stuff that never went anywhere. Microsoft is, of course, a software company first and foremost–and most software patent drawings are mundane diagrams, even when they depict something new and significant. So the ten images that follow skew towards Microsoft’s sideline business of hardware. I like ‘em anyway–and I didn’t repeat any pictures from our gallery of patents relating to anthropomorphic “assistants.””

The Synapse Program and Separate Brain Mapping Projects – “DARPA has funded the Synapse Program which seeks to break the programmable machine paradigm and define a new path forward for creating useful, intelligent machines…”

5 Reasons the Apple IPhone Beats the Amazon Kindle – “Apple iPhone is a better e-book reader than the Amazon Kindle 2…”

Super clocks: More accurate than time itself – “These are momentous times for Gill and others like him in timekeeping laboratories around the world. A new generation of atomic tickers, known as optical clocks, have just wrested the record for accuracy from the ensembles of oscillating caesium atoms that held it for half a century. Soon, the new technology will be so refined that if such a clock had ticked away every second since the big bang 13.7 billion years ago, it would not yet have missed a beat…”

Social Engineering: Anatomy of a Hack – “As the founder of Lares, a Colorado-based security consultancy, social-engineering expert Chris Nickerson is often asked by clients to conduct penetration testing of their on-sight security. Nickerson leads a team which conducts security risk assessments in a method he refers to as Red Team Testing. Watch Nickerson and his team pull off a $24,000 heist in this video…”

Google Earth ‘helps man find buried Spanish treasure ship’ – “A treasure hunter who claims to have found a buried ship filled with treasure using Google Earth, the popular satellite imaging service, is fighting a legal battle to excavate the site…”

Google energizes efforts to cut consumer electric bills – “Google pushes smart grid and its SmartMeter to help trim home energy costs…”

Intel demos first-ever 32nm processors – “Intel had a little roadmap event today to shed some light on its massive $7b fab investment, and the focus was mostly on the upcoming transition to 32nm processors — highlighted by the first-ever demo of a working 32nm Nehalem-based Westmere chip…”

Scientists develop revolutionary microchip that uses 30 times less energy – “Leaving your mobile phone charger at home when you go for a two week long vacation may just be the norm one day as scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Rice University, United States, have successfully created a microchip that uses 30 times less electricity while running seven times faster than today’s best technology…”

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