Solar-powered plane completes first ever 26-hour flight as it flies through the night on batteries charged during the day – “An experimental solar-powered plane has successfully completed its test flight and remained aloft for a record 26 hours and nine minutes – the longest and highest flight ever made by a solar plane…”

Android sees healthy growth at expense of Apple, RIM, MS – “Still, RIM kept its top spot with 41.7 percent of the overall market as of May 2010, followed by Apple at 24.4 percent and Microsoft at 13.2 percent. Google/Android stood at a solid 13 percent in May thanks to its four percentage point increase, and could very well overtake Microsoft by the time comScore releases its next MobiLens report…”

U.K. retail giant John Lewis has let out details of a new iPod Touch – “The details: The new iPod will be announced in September (as always) and will have a 5-MP camera with a flash, a gyroscope (for gaming) and FaceTime over Wi-Fi (suggesting it’ll also get the front-facing camera from the iPhone 4). Oddly, there is no mention of the retina display…”

Ultimate Alchemy – “Research into artificial atoms could lead to one startling endpoint: programmable matter that changes its makeup at the flip of a switch…”

what the Dunning-Kruger effect is and isn’t – “If you regularly read cognitive science or psychology blogs (or even just the lowly New York Times!), you’ve probably heard of something called the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect refers to the seemingly pervasive tendency of poor performers to overestimate their abilities relative to other people–and, to a lesser extent, for high performers to underestimate their abilities. The explanation for this, according to Kruger and Dunning, who first reported the effect in an extremely influential 1999 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, is that incompetent people by lack the skills they’d need in order to be able to distinguish good performers from bad performers…”

PR2 Robot Fetches Beer from the Refrigerator:

Perfect Citizen: secret NSA surveillance program revealed by WSJ – “Do you trust your government? Do you just support it like an obedient Britney Spears, steadfast to your faith that it will do the right thing? Your answer to those questions will almost certainly predict your response to a Wall Street Journal exposé of a classified US government program provocatively dubbed, “Perfect Citizen.” ” See also: U.S. Plans Cyber Shield for Utilities, Companies and NSA setting up secret ‘Perfect Citizen’ spy system

The race for green fuels – “Thousands of labs, companies and governments around the world are currently in an epic race—the race to produce a cheap, clean and sustainable fuel to power our cars, homes and factories. The road to green fuel is not an easy one, and there are many possible paths to victory, including bio engineering, bio-mimicry and good old-fashioned chemistry. It is not yet apparent which, if any, of these new technologies will pave the way for clean energy, but one thing is certain: we cannot continue to depend on fossil fuels to meet our energy needs. What follows is a look at some of the more promising biological and chemical innovations in the race for green energy…”

How Old is Earth, and How Do We Know? – “Earth scientists have devised many complementary and consistent techniques to estimate the ages of geologic events. Annually deposited layers of sediments or ice document hundreds of thousands of years of continuous Earth history. Gradual rates of mountain building, erosion of mountains, and the motions of tectonic plates imply hundreds of millions of years of change. Radiometric dating, which relies on the predictable decay of radioactive isotopes of carbon, uranium, potassium, and other elements, provides accurate age estimates for events back to the formation of Earth more than 4.5 billion years ago. These and other dating techniques are mutually consistent and underscore the reality of “deep time” in Earth history…”

Cell Development: How Do Plants and Animals End Up With Right Number of Cells in All the Right Places? – “For the first time, scientists have gained an insight into how this process is co-ordinated in plants. An international team, including Cardiff University’s School of Biosciences and Duke University in the USA, have linked the process of cell division with the way cells acquire their different characteristics…”

Gaming the System: How Marketers Rig the Social Media Machine – “Here are a few ways that self-promoters and marketers are already trying to game the social networking system…”

YouTube updates mobile site and launches Leanback – “YouTube has updated its mobile website and launched a new service that aims to give users a more TV-like experience. Writing on the company blog, product manger Andrey Doronichev wrote “Today, more than ever, we know that you want to be able to find and access your favorite videos wherever you are. That’s why we’re rolling out an updated version of the mobile site. It’s really fast. The user interface incorporates larger, more touch-friendly elements, making it easier to access videos on the go…” See also: YouTube bids for screen dominance

Chinese outsourcer seeks U.S. workers with IQ of 125 and up – “A Chinese IT outsourcing company that has started hiring new U.S. computer science graduates to work in Shanghai requires prospective job candidates to demonstrate an IQ of 125 or above on a test it administers to sort out job applicants…”

Turn your laptop wifi card into an access point to solve Android Ad hoc problem or connect multiple devices – ” Hidden away in the code of Windows 7 is some functionality that never got completed, and seems to be taken on by a company called Connectify this allows you to not just create a one to one ad hoc connection but also to change your little wireless card into an access point…”

How the electric car will save us – “It won’t happen overnight, obviously. And the extent to which such a far-flung system of small generators can replace large nuclear and coal-powered plants is much debated. But the electric utilities, including Progress Energy and Duke Energy, have moved from a posture of slow-walking the change to one of promising to lead it over the next 10–15 years. Critics question whether the utilities are really prepared to share control and cede power to the masses. Like the phone company before them, however, their choice may be limited to accepting the new technologies or clinging to their old ones as they become obsolete…”

From Blackberry to iPhone 4 – “As most of you know, I’ve recently gone from Symbian (s60) powered Nokia phones (N97, E71, N86, N79) to Blackberry (9700). Well, the Blackberry didn’t last too long in the end. I’ve just switched to something that I held out against for quite some time–an iPhone. Yep, I went and got myself a 16GB iPhone 4. Why, you might ask?”

The Pirate Bay Hacked, Attackers Gain Access To Entire User Database – “A series of attacks on The Pirate Bay, one of the most well known and controversial file-sharing websites has allowed a group of Argentinian hackers, headed by malware researcher Ch Russo, to access both the user database and the website administration panel of The Pirate Bay, comprising over 4 million usernames and email addresses in the process…”

Startup Aims to Bring Useless Farmland Back to Life – “Around the world, a billion acres of agricultural land lay abandoned. In the United States, 15 million acres of cropland falls under this category. Decades of repeated irrigation and declining water quality have made much of this once-productive land too salty to support plant growth. Among the strategies to put this land back to use is to develop crops that can tolerate high-salinity soils…”

Does the length of someone’s telomeres predict their risk of cancer? – “Telomeres — those fancy structures that protect the tips of chromosomes — have been a hot area of scientific study for some time. In 2009, three biologists shared a Nobel Prize for their telomere research. The gradual shortening of these structures could be one reason why cells age and die. (Here’s a Times article about telomeres.)”

Weighty issue: quest on for kilogram precision – “Locked in a safe in a government facility on Sydney’s North Shore is a metal ingot weighing precisely one kilogram. It is the kilogram against which all other kilograms in Australia are measured. But even with every precaution in place it is virtually impossible to stop a physical item from changing by minuscule increments…”

Sand berms a dubious solution: A guest column by Len Bahr – “Obviously no handbook exists on effective responses to such a massive oil release. This policy vacuum, combined with panic and desperation among coastal residents, created an irresistible opportunity for grandstanding on the part of our ambitious young governor…”

The Navy Reveals Secret Device to Defeat IEDs – “The Pentagon has researched lasers, projectiles, jammers and everything else to defeat improvised explosive devices. The new effort uses radio waves to blow them up before their makers intend—but will it work?”

Dead Pink phone fallout hits Microsoft’s top brass – “Allegations have been flying of autocratic leadership, incompetence, ignorance of what it takes to build consumer products, and an uninvolved and indifferent senior management. These have mingled with demands that heads must roll in the wake of KIN’s death…”

Computer Program Solves Flu Problem – “By essentially decoding the flu virus, this software could create vaccines that are life-savers for millions…”

Air-Purifying Road Surface Eats 45% of NOx Pollution – “Researchers at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands have tested pollution-eating concrete on about 1,000 square meters of roads in the town of Hengelo. We already knew it worked in the lab, but this was a real-world test and the results are pretty impressive: a 25 to 45% reduction in oxides of nitrogen (NOx) over the special roads. This could mean that someday our roads and other concrete structures could be used to clean up the air. How does it work? Read on for the details…”

Artificial intelligence: will we be aware when we’ve made a breakthrough? – ” With the arrival of a myriad of sensor components and their rapid deployment on the periphery of networks, the internet, robotics, large and small systems, we are much closer to creating true artificial intelligence than ever before…”

Debunking the Top 10 Energy Myths – “The road to clean energy is full of enticing opportunities—and perilous pitfalls. Picking the best path requires avoiding both starry-eyed hype and cynical fatalism. In this special report, PM debunks 10 of the most pernicious myths that could derail our progress…”

[[[Jump to - Interesting Reading #526 – 24-hour solar plane, Monkeys on catapults, the real iPhone antenna story and much more…]]]