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U.S. Formula One Team Faces Massive Time Crunch – “America will soon have its first entrant in Formula One, the world’s top-tier racing series, in thirty years. The obstacles facing the Charlotte, N.C.-based team are enormous, but they’re committed to succeed. With less than two months to go before the first race, PM investigates the progress…”
Is NAND flash about to hit a dead end? – “When IM Flash Technologies (IMFT) announced this week that it’s manufacturing a 25-nanometer (nm) NAND flash chip, the company also admitted that shrinking the technology much further may not be possible because of problems with bit errors and reliability. If that turns out to be true, one of the basic building blocks used for storage in solid-state drives (SSDs) and memory cards may be nearing a dead end…”
The Navy’s New, Digital-Age Flagship in a Box – ” On board the USS Bataan, there are four 10 x 8–foot containers that support digital age communications, transferring data at up to 200 Mb/s. From Operation Unified Response in Haiti, Benjamin Chertoff reports on the Navy’s new flagship in a box…”
Are Multivitamins Worth the Money? – “Nowadays, there seems to be a pill for everything, and multivitamins are getting a reputation of being a quick fix for nutrition and overall healthy living. But University of Cincinnati Physicians say that for the healthy patient, multivitamins aren’t living up to their promise…”
Lunch on the run: Shocking moment LIVE cow is fed to five hungry tigers in front of tourists – “Visiting a wildlife park is often an opportunity to witness nature up close. But imagine one group of tourist’s surprise when several hungry tigers tucked into a live cow right in front of them. These pictures show the shocking moment tourist guides fed a live cow to five hungry tigers…”
Could life exist on Jupiter moon? – “Discovering life on another planet would change our sense of place in the Universe. And the encounter may be closer than we think, according to a BBC Radio 4 documentary – 2010: Space Odyssey to Europa…”
The Money Behind the New Computing War – “I love when tech companies go to war. And this one is going to be huge. No, not huge: Gigapocalyptical. The domination of a new age of computing is at stake, and Apple, Google, and Microsoft want to win…”
Sen. Franken to Comcast, NBC execs: merger no laughing matter – “Comcast and NBC Universal didn’t get a whole lot of love at Thursday’s emotional Senate and House hearings on their proposed merger. But company representatives did get plenty of questions. At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl cracked no smiles as he ran through four “principal areas of concern” about the deal: potential programming price hikes, loss of free over-the-air TV content, hobbling independent programmers, and weakening Internet TV…”
Doped Graphane Should Superconduct at 90K – “New calculations reveal that p-doped graphane should superconduct at 90K, making possible an entirely new generation of devices cooled by liquid nitrogen…”
Junk science kills – ” The media gave big headlines to this week’s stories on a prestigious British medical publication’s retraction of an article that had claimed to show a causal link between standard childhood vaccinations (measles, mumps and rubella) and autism. Yet the coverage of the Lancet affair didn’t truly convey the outrageousness of the original publication or the gravity of its consequences — consequences long festering, since the paper was published not last week but 12 years ago…”
Pentagon Looks to Breed Immortal ‘Synthetic Organisms,’ Molecular Kill-Switch Included – “The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch…”
We just met, but I feel like I know you. Do I? – “The old saying goes that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Why would that be? Surely, getting to know someone ought to give you more valuable information about who they are than just a brief encounter. And clearly first impressions can be mistaken. A favorite storyline in the featured wedding in the Sunday New York Times is that the couple didn’t like each other when they first met even though their friends were all convinced that they were right for each other…”
The iPad Ecosystem: Economics, Elitism, And Advertising – “A number of iPad-related stories broke over the last couple days; we’ve rounded up some of the larger topics into a single news post. First up, graphic designer Paul Threatt took exception to some of Apple’s iPad advertisements, several of which purported to show the device running Flash without a hitch. In the screenshot below, the iPad is surfing the New York Times and displaying a slideshow that’s only viewable on a browser with Flash installed. Threatt didn’t just complain to the company, he filed suit with the FTC, alleging that Apple’s ad conveyed false/misleading information about the capabilities of the device. From the complaint…”
Apple Bans ‘Android’ from App Store Descriptions – “Apple has a fairly infamous track record when it comes to the language it allows in its App Store. Words like “boobs” and “booty” are out. Now “Android” is apparently the latest in a long line of deadly words. According to one developer, Apple has requested that the name of Google’s mobile operating system be removed for an app description…”
Last member of 65,000-year-old tribe dies, taking one of world’s earliest languages to the grave – “Named after the tribe, Bo is one of the 10 Great Andamanese languages, which are thought to date back to the pre-Neolithic period when the earliest humans walked out of Africa…”
The most isolated tribe in the world? – “Perhaps no people on Earth remain more genuinely isolated than the Sentinelese. They are thought to be directly descended from the first human populations to emerge from Africa, and have probably lived in the Andaman Islands for up to 60,000 years. The fact that their language is so different even from other Andaman islanders suggests that they have had little contact with other people for thousands of years…”
India abandons IPCC, sets up own panel – “The Indian government has moved to establish its own body to address and monitor science surrounding climate change, saying it “cannot rely” on the official United Nation panel. The move is a severe blow to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) following the revelation parts of its 3000 page 2007 report on climate science was not subjected to peer review…”
Physicists Kill Cancer With ‘Nanobubbles’ – “Using lasers and nanoparticles, scientists at Rice University have discovered a new technique for singling out individual diseased cells and destroying them with tiny explosions. The scientists used lasers to make “nanobubbles” by zapping gold nanoparticles inside cells. In tests on cancer cells, they found they could tune the lasers to create either small, bright bubbles that were visible but harmless or large bubbles that burst the cells…”
40% of cancers are preventable worldwide – “According to the International Union Against Cancer, about 40% of the cancers in the world are potentially preventable by an improvement in lifestyle—just follow its five simple measures to a healthier life and a reduced risk from cancer….”
David Agus: A new strategy in the war on cancer – “Traditionally, David Agus explains, cancer treatments have had a short-sighted focus on the offending individual cells. He suggests a new, cross-disciplinary approach, using atypical drugs, computer modeling and protein analysis to treat and analyze the whole body…”
With a little help, water can freeze as it heats up – “The Celsius scale is an elegant, simple system of measurement: water freezes at 0 degree Celsius and boils at 100 degrees C. (The actual definition of the scale is a bit more complex, involving the so-called triple point of water, but that’s the general idea.) But chefs at high altitudes know that the simplicity of Celsius doesn’t always hold—the higher your kitchen, the lower the boiling point of water. Similarly, water’s freezing point is negotiable, with “supercooled” water able to remain liquid down to around –40 degrees, and even colder at extreme pressures. Supercooling can occur if water is so pure and is kept in such uncontaminated conditions that the molecules have nothing to interact with and crystallize around….”
Imagining The Fate Of Data After The Apocalypse – “The question, then, is in the absence of most of the raw materials that powered the construction of our current industrial civilization – there wouldn’t be nearly enough fossil fuels to rebuild from scratch, for instance – whether the survivors of this collapse could make use of the one great resource we would leave behind in huge quantities: information. If we could leave behind the equivalent of a cheat sheet for these post-apocalyptic survivors, could they perhaps bypass the trial and error of rebuilding science and jump straight to the achievements of the 21st century?”
9-year-old plots his fifth Microsoft certification – “Getting kids today to unplug from technology can be difficult, but for the parents of 9-year-old Marko Calasan of Skopje, Macedonia, it’s nearly impossible. With four Microsoft certifications already under his belt, Calasan plans to get his fifth IT certification as a Microsoft Certified Trainer. Calasan also intends to use the novelty of his story to teach others about technology via books, YouTube and more. Network World Senior Editor Denise Dubie caught up with the young Calasan via e-mail to learn more about his high-tech hobbies…”
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