Jaguar Building a Turbine Hybrid – “How cool is this: Jaguar is developing a range-extended luxury hybrid that may use a tiny gas turbine to power the electric motor. As crazy as the idea might sound, the British government is bankrolling the idea to the tune of $24 million…”

New adhesive device could let humans walk on walls – “Could humans one day walk on walls, like Spider-Man? A palm-sized device invented at Cornell that uses water surface tension as an adhesive bond just might make it possible. The rapid adhesion mechanism could lead to such applications as shoes or gloves that stick and unstick to walls, or Post-it-like notes that can bear loads…”

National Ignition Facility Achieves Unprecedented 1 Megajoule Laser Shot – “The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have successfully delivered an historic level of laser energy — more than 1 megajoule — to a target in a few billionths of a second and demonstrated the target drive conditions required to achieve fusion ignition…”

Toyota Recall: Maybe It Isn’t the Gas Pedal – “As Jalopnik’s Matt Hardigree reports, Apple (APPL) co-founder Steve Wozniak, a Prius owner, suspects that Toyota’s (TM) massive unintended acceleration problem—which has now forced the world’s number one carmaker from selling cars—might not be due to faulty gas pedals but rather a software snafu…” See also: Wozniak cites ‘scary’ Prius acceleration problem

Beautiful rotary engine animation:

Smart Armor Knows Its Own Strength, As Well As The Enemy’s – “While weapons continue to grow smarter and smarter, the U.S. Army is developing armor to match the arms. A new ‘intelligent’ armor under development at the Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center can evaluate its own condition, identify the type of round being shot at it, and even generate electrical power from bullet strikes. Whether wrapped around a tank or an infantryman, the smart armor can relay information to soldiers in real time, extensively upping battlefield awareness…”

Saul Griffith’s House of Cool Ideas – “Other Lab founder Saul Griffiths has made a fortune applying way-out mathematics to inventions large and small, including robotic kites, insulation inspired by origami, and the carbon-emissions calculator WattzOn…”

The Depressing News About Antidepressants – “Studies suggest that the popular drugs are no more effective than a placebo. In fact, they may be worse…”

“Digital Nation”: What has the Internet done to us? – “Let’s see, so the digital revolution led us all to this: a gigantic, commercial, high school reunion/mall filthy with insipid tabloid trivia, populated by perpetually distracted, texting, tweeting demi-humans. Yes, the information age truly is every bit as glorious and special as everyone predicted it would be!”

At Long Last, Clear Messages for High-Speed Rail – “The exact distribution of the $8 billion earmarked for HSR in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ( aka the stimulus bill) has long been the subject of rumor and speculation. As applications poured in, pundits and commenters suggested everything from divvying the money up equally among the projects to giving the whole pot to one mega-project. What stands out about the awards is their piecemeal nature…”

E-Book Pricing Put Into Turmoil – “The $9.99 best seller that helped Amazon.com Inc. build a dominant position in the now-thriving e-book market was at risk of extinction Sunday after Amazon capitulated in a battle sparked by the launch of Apple Inc.’s new iPad. Amazon conceded defeat Sunday evening after halting sales of all books published by Macmillan in a dispute over higher e-book prices. Having made the $9.99 e-book a fixture, Amazon now faces the prospect of raising its prices to match new terms Apple is offering publishers…”

The iPad’s Closed System: Sometimes I Hate Being Right – “Remember that groundbreaking Apple Super Bowl ad from 1984? The one where the woman throws a hammer at Big Brother, signifying a new era of freedom that would be ushered in with Macintosh? My, how times have changed. Here we are more than 25 years later and the despotic, all-knowing face up there on that giant screen now belongs to Steve Jobs—and Big Brother Steve is holding an iPad…”

The 10 Coolest Experiments from Google Labs – ” When you’ve got thousands of the world’s most brilliant engineers spending 20% of their time on whatever takes their fancy, cool software is the result…”

Hundreds of Quakes Are Rattling Yellowstone – “In the last two weeks, more than 100 mostly tiny earthquakes a day, on average, have rattled a remote area of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, putting scientists who monitor the park’s strange and volatile geology on alert…”

Hearing aid you wear on your tooth – “Here’s a new (unreleased) hearing aid that you wear over a back molar. It uses a wireless mic behind your ear to transmit sound to the tooth-unit, which then retransmits the sound through bone conduction — without having to drill pins into your skull or surgically embed hardware, which is then hard to upgrade when the field advances…”

Dirty pond holds new organism – “New life has been found in a British pond that survives in an unique way…”

Google’s Chrome OS tablet – “This page contains visual explorations of how a Chrome OS tablet UI might look in hardware. Some possibilites they explore include…”

Engineering the Computer of the Future, One Atom at a Time – “Using computers based on the mind-boggling physics of the quantum world, researchers now hope to simulate reality on the molecular scale better than ever before…”

Microsoft says it’s looking into laptop battery issues with Windows 7 – “We’ve already seen some evidence that suggests Windows 7 puts a particularly hard drain on at least some laptop and netbook batteries, and it looks like Microsoft has now heard enough complaints itself to open an investigation into the matter…”

Branson goes 20,000 leagues under the sea – “Virgin unveiled the latest addition to Richard Branson’s luxury fleet on Friday: an underwater plane that will fly riders into the depths of the Caribbean Sea…”

U.S. Navy Launches Cyber Command – “The U.S. Navy has followed the Air Force and the Marine Corps in setting up a command center dedicated to overseeing and protecting its presence in cyber space. The U.S. Fleet Cyber Command is aimed at defending the Navy’s IT systems against cyber attack and to use information systems and the Web to achieve military objectives, according to the Navy…”

The Federal Budget – National Aeronautics and Space Administration – “National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) drives advances in science, technology, and exploration to enhance knowledge, education, innovation, economic vitality, stewardship of the Earth, and solutions to national and global challenges. The President’s Budget invests an additional $6 billion in NASA over the next five years – an overall $100 billion commitment to the agency…”

Charting the Winners and Losers in Obama’s Science Budget – “President Obama’s administration revealed its new budget Monday, and it increases funding for nearly all areas of science…”

Statement from Buzz Aldrin: A New Direction in Space – “Today I wish to endorse strongly the President’s new direction for NASA. As an Apollo astronaut, I know the importance of always pushing new frontiers as we explore space. The truth is, that we have already been to the Moon – some 40 years ago…”

Global Deal Might Let Officials Unplug Your Internet – “Canadian officials travel to Guadalajara, Mexico this week to resume negotiations on the still-secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The discussion is likely to turn to the prospect of supporting three-strikes and you’re out systems that could result in thousands of people losing access to the Internet based on three allegations of copyright infringement…”

Physicists Discover How to Grow Graphene – “The discovery of a way to grow graphene should make possible the widespread manufacture of graphene-based electronics.” See also: Epitaxial Graphene on Silicon toward Graphene-Silicon Fusion Electronics

“You Can’t Make Inexpensive TVs with Cheap Parts”—William Wang, VIZIO – “”Legacy companies.” That’s what William Wang, the man who has led VIZIO Inc. to become one of the top TV manufacturers in the United States, calls the companies who are still in the business from the age of CRT. Companies like Sony Corp., for example…”

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch Defends Flash, Warns HTML5 Will Throw The Web “Back To The Dark Ages Of Video” – “Adobe’s Flash technology has been taking a beating lately. Apple still won’t support it on its upcoming iPad or its iPhone. Steve Jobs calls it buggy and crash-prone and dismisses Adobe as being lazy. Adobe is trying to fight the negative vibes emanating from Cupertino and elsewhere. It has already pointed out that it will be easy to convert Flash apps into iPad apps, and now CTO Kevin Lynch is weighing in to defend Flash…”

Questions (and Answers) on the iPad’s Shortcomings – “The weird thing about the iPad is that it has landed us 180 degrees from where we thought we were heading. The iPad interface — like the iPhone’s — tries to do everything in its power to do away with documents and files. There is no Finder or root-level file navigation. It’s apps, apps, apps, as far as the eye can see. According to the demo last week, the main way to launch iWork documents is by an internal document-selection process after launch, where your files are presented to you in a gallery format…”

Google v. China: the view from the Middle Kingdom – “Those living in the US have no doubt heard the accusations by Google and the concern of the State Department—but the debate has played out quite differently in the Chinese media and among Chinese citizens. We asked China-based journalist Steven Schwankert to give us the Chinese perspective on censorship, Google, and the US call for more “Internet freedom.”" See also: Many wired Chinese unfazed at possible Google exit

SurroundSense uses your phone’s sensors to figure out where you are – “Smartphones use GPS locating for a variety of functions but mainly they’re used on the road where their accuracy – only within 10m – is basically a case of ‘near enough is good enough’. But try using one indoors. They don’t work! Nor can they distinguish between two adjacent environments, however different. And 10m can make a big difference inside a shopping complex or multi-roomed office block. In a research jointly sponsored by Microsoft, Nokia, Verizon and the National Science Foundation, a group of computer engineers from Duke University is working on achieving better indoor localization using a combination of sounds, lighting and accelerometer data picked up by a mobile phone…”

Facebook viewed as riskiest social network by companies – “Seventy percent more companies reported spam and malicious infections arrived via social networks in 2009 vs. 2008. By the end of last year, 72% of companies expressed concern that their employees’ use of popular social sites could result in a security breach. And 60% of companies now consider Facebook to be the riskiest social network out there…”

Pressure mounts to phase out Internet Explorer 6 – “A Downing Street petition is calling for the UK government to drop Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) and move to a more modern browser…”

Global warming makes trees grow at fastest rate for 200 years – “Forests in the northern hemisphere could be growing faster now than they were 200 years ago as a result of climate change, according to a study of trees in eastern America…”

Will Marry for Health Insurance!! – “Thank you for taking a few moments out of your day to view my story. My name is Terri Carlson. I am 45 and was born with a genetic immune disorder C-4 complement deficiency. I am currently on cobra health insurance (from my divorce, 2 years ago) but it runs out in a year. And now my current situation is that I can’t buy health insurance because of my pre- existing condition…”

Henrietta Lacks’ ‘Immortal’ Cells – “Medical researchers use laboratory-grown human cells to learn the intricacies of how cells work and test theories about the causes and treatment of diseases. The cell lines they need are “immortal”—they can grow indefinitely, be frozen for decades, divided into different batches and shared among scientists. In 1951, a scientist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, created the first immortal human cell line with a tissue sample taken from a young black woman with cervical cancer. Those cells, called HeLa cells, quickly became invaluable to medical research—though their donor remained a mystery for decades. In her new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, journalist Rebecca Skloot tracks down the story of the source of the amazing HeLa cells, Henrietta Lacks, and documents the cell line’s impact on both modern medicine and the Lacks family….”

Burrowing US prairie dogs use complex language – “A tiny rodent may have the most sophisticated language of any animal. This bold claim comes from US-based academic Professor Con Slobodchikoff who has long studied the vocal repertoire of Gunnison’s prairie dog…”

Why Does Time Fly By As You Get Older? – “Yes, we all get older. But now, getting older has become a video fetish; all kinds of people take pictures of themselves every day for six, seven, eight years and then blend the images together into a … well, if you’ve missed the Web craze, Homer Simpson’s “Every Day” is a perfect catcher-upper…”

Gallery of Processor Cache Effects – “Most of my readers will understand that cache is a fast but small type of memory that stores recently accessed memory locations. This description is reasonably accurate, but the “boring” details of how processor caches work can help a lot when trying to understand program performance…”

The immorality of power – “The scientists argue that power is corrupting because it leads to moral hypocrisy. Although we almost always know what the right thing to do is – cheating at dice is a sin – power makes it easier to justify the wrongdoing, as we rationalize away our moral mistake. For instance, when Lammers and Galinsky asked the subjects (in both low and high-power conditions) how they would judge an individual who drove too fast when late for an appointment, or whether it was acceptable to cheat on the income tax, people with power consistently said it was worse when others committed those crimes than when they did. In other words, the powerful people believe they had a good reason for speeding – they’re important people, with important things to do – but everyone else should follow the posted signs. We become the exception to the rule, which is the law…”

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