Axion’s New Lead-Carbon Batteries May Help Usher In Electric Cars – “While much of the industry is focused on lithium ion, a new twist on the old lead-acid formula may be an interim solution. For now check out these fuel-efficient cars…”

Chrysler developing electric sports car for 2010 – “Dodge Circuit, a two-seat roadster, could be Chrysler’s first step into electric cars, provided the company survives…”

United To Charge Heavier Passengers Twice To Fly – “Airline Says Overweight Travelers Will Need To Buy Extra Seats Or Be Denied Entry To Planes…”

Bacon: the Other White Heat – “You know bacon is delicious, but did you know it contains enough energy to melt metal?”

Inside the precision hack – “At 4AM this morning I received an email inviting me to an IRC chatroom where someone would explain to me exactly how the Time.com 100 Poll was precision hacked…”

Google is building a social network under our very noses. It could be bigger and better than Facebook. – “Little did we know however that whilst we thought Google had made a conscious decision to take steps away from the “social networking” arena, they were building one right under our noses and have the capabilities to grow larger and more useful than any competitor…” See also: On Facebook, Craptastic Apps a Plenty

New warning over ‘catastrophic’ sea level rise, scientists claim – “Sea levels could rise by a “catastrophic” 10 feet by the end of the century – putting millions of people at risk of flooding with coastal cities such as London, New York, Tokyo and Calcutta submerged, according to a new study…”

iRobot says its Warrior bot is more human than ASIMO – “Is a humanoid robot inherently more human than your average task-specific bot?”

Read the article, then see the Warrior in action:

US mulls stiffer sentences for common Net proxies – “”Proxy” servers are an everyday part of Internet surfing. But using one in a crime could soon lead to more time in the clink…”

Health risks of shipping pollution have been ‘underestimated’ – “One giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars, study finds…” and could be killing 60,000 people per year…

Satellites show how Earth moved during Italy quake – “Studying satellite radar data from ESA’s Envisat and the Italian Space Agency’s COSMO-SkyMed, scientists have begun analysing the movement of Earth during and after the 6.3 earthquake that shook the medieval town of L’Aquila in central Italy on 6 April 2009…”

Egyptians hope to find Cleopatra’s tomb – “Cleopatra and Mark Antony were immortalised as two of history’s greatest lovers, but their final resting place has always been a mystery. Now archaeologists in Egypt are about to start excavating a site that they believe could conceal their tombs…”

US scientists to grow brussels sprouts on Moon – “US scientists are planning to grow vegetables such as brussels sprouts on the Moon in an experiment to see if a future colony could produce its own food…”

1,500 farmers commit mass suicide in India – “Bharatendu Prakash, from the Organic Farming Association of India, told the Press Association: “Farmers’ suicides are increasing due to a vicious circle created by money lenders. They lure farmers to take money but when the crops fail, they are left with no option other than death.” “

Extreme DIY: Labs compete to build a living machine – “An international competition aims to turn the building blocks of life into useful technology…”

Universe May Not Be “Fine-Tuned” for Life – “The chemistry of life may be more robust than we thought against changes in the fundamental laws of physics…”

Echo vision: The man who sees with sound – “My way is by clicking my tongue and listening for the patterns of reflections. By doing this, I can get 3D pictures…”

DARPA AI will trawl petabytes of UAV vid for enemy cows – “Renowned Pentagon tech-tomfoolery agency DARPA has announced a new plan to create mighty artificial intelligences. The so-called “Deep Learning” machines will be used to trawl through petabytes of video from robot aircraft prowling the skies – initially, apparently, seeking out threatening horses and cows….”

The Failure of #amazonfail – “Though the event initially triggered enormous moral outrage, evidence that it didn’t actually happen didn’t quell that outrage. Moral judgment is harder to reverse than other, less emotional forms; when an event precipitates the cleansing anger of righteousness, admitting you were mistaken feels dirty. As a result, there can be an enormous premium put on finding rationales for continuing to feel aggrieved, should the initial rationale disappear. Call it ‘conservation of outrage.’”

Eyeball spy turns the tables on Big Brother – “AN ORWELLIAN nightmare it may be to many of us, but CCTV is a boat full of holes to the organisations that pay for it. That’s because the people watching CCTV images back in the control rooms often have too many screens to monitor at once, and so may miss the criminal or antisocial activities they are there to spot…”

Gadget Graveyard: 10 Technologies About to Go Extinct – ” Looking back at the 20th century, it’s clear that even the biggest and baddest gadget sensations will one day fall victim to technological evolution…”

The 10 greatest flops in computer history – “They were way ahead of their time and could have advanced the power of mass home computing by years. But these revolutionary concepts became the biggest failures in digital history…”

How To Take Ritalin Correctly – “That said, the key to amphetamines and Ritalin is to stop thinking of them as stimulants, and to think of them as reinforcers…”

Missouri’s largest wind project to create 2,500 jobs – “Vice President Joe Biden and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke are set to attend an announcement Thursday in Jefferson City detailing plans for Missouri’s largest wind energy development, which is expected to cost about $300 million and create more than 2,500 jobs…”

What happens at absolute zero? – “I’ve heard that at absolute zero molecular motion stops. But what happens to electrons, do they also stop? If they do, what prevents them from falling into the nucleus?”

China launched navigation satellite named Compass – “China has successfully launched its second navigation satellite today from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province…”

NASA: Colbert name on treadmill, not room – “Comedian Stephen Colbert will get a treadmill, not a room, named for him on the space station. “We don’t typically name U.S. space station hardware after living people and this is no exception,” a NASA spokesman said…”

PIN Crackers Nab Holy Grail of Bank Card Security – “Hackers have crossed into new frontiers by devising sophisticated ways to steal large amounts of personal identification numbers, or PINs, protecting credit and debit cards, says an investigator. The attacks involve both unencrypted PINs and encrypted PINs that attackers have found a way to crack, according to an investigator behind a new report looking at the data breaches…”

Pirates Beware: Soon Rifles That Kill from a Mile Away – “The three Navy SEAL snipers who killed the pirates off the coast of Somalia last weekend were lucky the buccaneers were gullible enough to allow their lifeboat to be towed farther out to sea by the U.S.S. Bainbridge. The shortened towline turned what could have been a trio of difficult shots across hundreds of yards of ocean into relatively easy 30-yd. pops. It’s a safe bet future pirates won’t be so naive…”

Honda Gets Its Walk On – “In the corner of a small meeting room, I found a display of two devices. One looked like robotic legs pulled from the pages of a manga. The other looked like a mechanical girdle (strapped around a clear mannequin torso). The devices, I was told by David Iida, a Honda spokesman, are meant for people who have difficulty walking…”

Tour the AlloSphere, a stunning new way to see scientific data – “JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the AlloSphere, an entirely new way to see and interpret scientific data, in full color and surround sound inside a massive metal sphere. Dive into the brain, feel electron spin, hear the music of the elements …”

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