Superfast Bullet Trains Are Finally Coming to the U.S. – “Believe it: Bullet trains are coming. After decades of false starts, planners are finally beginning to make headway on what could become the largest, most complicated infrastructure project ever attempted in the US. The Obama administration got on board with an $8 billion infusion, and more cash is likely en route from Congress. It’s enough for Florida and Texas to dust off some previously abandoned plans and for urban clusters in the Northeast and Midwest to pursue some long-overdue upgrades. The nation’s test bed will almost certainly be California, which already has voter-approved funding and planning under way. But getting up to speed requires more than just seed money. For trains to beat planes and automobiles, the hardware needs to really fly. Officials are pushing to deploy state-of-the-art rail rockets. Next stop: the future…”

Craig Cunningham Has a Simple Solution for Getting Bill Collectors Off His Back. He Sues Them. – “Desperation took him online in a search of anything that could save him from his own $100,000 in bad choices. One afternoon while sitting on his couch in his El Paso home, he found a way to fight back. He stumbled across hundreds of other distraught consumers like himself on credit message boards, each with some different version of the same story of bad choices and greed. And, he found a new way to deal with his debt: He could hide behind the law. His new online friends pointed him to a number of federal and state statutes protecting consumers like him against overly aggressive and abusive debt collectors and a credit system stacked against the little guy. If you knew your rights, he learned on the message boards, you were very likely to catch a collector violating them. Then you could sue…”

Going For Exawatts: Building the most powerful laser in the world – ” Producing a laser with a power of a terawatt — equal to one trillion watts — used to be impressive, but now the forefront of optical research power is measured in 1 quadrillion-watt units known as petawatts. But even that much power isn’t good enough for physics professor Todd Ditmire at the University of Texas at Austin…”

Hand Warmers – Small packets of warmth work through a simple exothermic reaction – “For winter sports enthusiasts, hand warmers can mean the difference between calling it a day early and playing outside for as long as possible. In fact, anyone who braves cold temperatures might be tempted to try the little pouches that emit warmth within seconds of being exposed to air…”

Why I studied AGW – “What I found is that the entire process of scientific study of the earth’s climate data, combined with the computer models developed to predict future climate, is extremely susceptible to abuse. What I mean by that is even minor data ‘adjustments’ or data cherry picking, can completely change the conclusions. If, for example, the observed data were to show clear, high-confidence trends, and the sensor systems were of high accuracy (un-affected by effects like urban heating, etc) and if the predictive computer models were shown to work, some preliminary conclusion could be drawn. However, even that scenario would continuously call out for more data, more analysis for increasing the confidence in the theory before a proof were claimed (i.e. use of the proper scientific method).”

Big Waves Rising Faster than Sea Level – “A new assessment of offshore data from Oregon and Washington finds the annual average heights of deep-water waves have increased since the mid-1970s—with both the low waves of summer and the highest storms waves of winter growing yearly…”

NASA’s Prophet Will Give You Nightmares – “Professor Hansen has been driven into a strange situation, and produced a strange book. For one-third of a century now, this cantankerous scientist has been more accurate in his predictions about global warming than anyone else alive. He saw these disastrous changes coming long before others did, and the U.S. government has tried to censor or sack him for his prescience. Now he has written a whistle-blower’s account while still at the top: a story of how our political system is so wilfully, deliberately blind to environmental realities that we have no choice now but for American citizens to take direct physical action against the polluters. It’s hardly what you expect to hear from the upper echelons of NASA: not a call to the stars, but a call to the streets. Toss a thousand scientific papers into a blender along with All the President’s Men and Mahatma Gandhi, and you’ve got this riveting, disorienting book…”

How can I make it out alive – Instructions for surviving a hostage situation

15 Fascinating Planets Outside Our Solar System – “Since then Exoplanetology, the study of exoplanets has evolved rapidly into a new branch of Astronomy, uncovering more than 400 such planets (30 of which in the month of October 2009 alone), but most of them were disappointingly similar to the first ones: hot bloated gas giants revolving very close to their star with orbital periods measured in days – sometimes termed “roasters,” and brown dwarves – failed stars which can be easily mistaken for the most massive planets…”

Apple To End AT&T iPhone Exclusivity On Wednesday – “CME_happy AT&T captivity is the single biggest reason foks who don’t buy iPhones don’t buy them, so this would be big…”

Strange Places on Mars: What Do You Want to See Next? – “NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured more than 13,000 images of the red planet’s surface. And now, the space agency wants your input on what images to acquire next…”

HULC:

Earth becoming invisible to aliens – “Chances of earth being detected by alien life forms are disappearing because of the digital revolution, a leading space scientist has claimed…”

Building Better Hydrogels With Mix of Clay and Water – “If you’re like most people, you probably don’t think much about hydrogels. Even when you encounter them — those Jell-O cubes in the school cafeteria, say, or the Sea Foam Salad you had at Grandma’s — you probably don’t give them a second thought. But some scientists think about hydrogels a lot, and these materials made up of cross-linking compounds and water have come a long way in recent years. One goal is to develop gels that are stronger and self-healing, with potential applications in tissue replacement and other medical fields.”

The Secret Life of Chaos, with Prof. Jim Al-Khalili (2010) – “Chaos theory has a bad name, conjuring up images of unpredictable weather, economic crashes and science gone wrong. But there is a fascinating and hidden side to Chaos…”

Grocery shopping with Dr. Oz: Veggies yes, bakery no – “When Dr. Oz is your grocery shopping buddy, there will be no cookies hidden in your cart under the spinach he’s piled there. In fact, this Dr. Kildare for the Age of Adipose will commandeer your cart and steer it well away from the snack aisles of the CityPlace Publix in West Palm Beach. “Poison!” he says, with a dismissive wave of his surgeon’s hands…”

To Understand Congress, Just Watch the Sandpile – “What does it take for a resolution in Congress to achieve sizeable support? It’s easy to imagine that the support of certain influential representatives is crucial because of their skill in the cut and thrust of political bargaining…”

How to use a semicolon – “The most feared punctuation on earth”

TechCrunch Hacked – “Tech site TechCrunch as been subject to a hacking that has taken its main content completely offline…”

In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits – “The door of a dry-cleaner-size storefront in an industrial park in Wareham, Massachusetts, an hour south of Boston, might not look like a portal to the future of American manufacturing, but it is. This is the headquarters of Local Motors, the first open source car company to reach production. Step inside and the office reveals itself as a mind-blowing example of the power of micro-factories…”

Brain can only handle 150 friends – “HUMAN brains can only remember up to 150 meaningful relationships, despite the huge amount of Facebook friends some people can gather. Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford University, says that this number has been the same throughout history and among different societies…”

Speculating about the Universe as a quantum fluid – “The first thing that struck me about Hitoshi Murayama was that he certainly did not fit the stereotype of a Japanese presenter—he’s relaxed, eloquent, and clearly very, very excited about his work. He is the head of a new research center in Japan called the Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe—a purview that allows him to study just about anything. But he’s chosen to study everything; Murayama wants to know why there is, in fact, a universe…”

This Spring’s Hottest New Accessory: a Bionic Limb? – “As if people weren’t worrying enough about advanced prostheses making amputees stronger than normal humans, now we have to worry if they are going to make them sexier, too. The prosthetics industry is growing rapidly, and, according to Hugh Herr, the director of MIT Media Lab’s Biomechatronics Group, advanced prostheses will soon become envied in the same way the newest electronic gadget or the hottest car is today…”

[[[Jump to - Interesting Reading #403 – outsourcing the astronaut taxi, beating spam, 3-D Surveillance, better fusion and much more...]]]