Clipmarks | tabsey's clips

Real-Life Droid Army of Robotic Spiders to Be Deployed 'By End of the Year'

Mon, 05 May 2008 14:18:45 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Not a nice concept. Whoever has the biggest bug squatter, wins.

In another creepy case of life mimicking fiction, BAE Systems is creating an army of robotic spiders that they will be selling to the US Army to use in warfare. The development is causing some worry over whether some of the frightening scenes in the sci-fi flick Minority Report were a fairly accurate representation of the future.

In the movie, Tom Cruise is chased by an army of government deployed robotic spider spies attempting to hunt him down. Although Hollywood intended it as science fiction, the US military says they are dropping the fiction part of the equation.

Dr. Joseph Mait of the US Army Research Lab explains, “Robotic platforms extend the warfighter's senses and reach, providing operational capabilities that would otherwise be costly, impossible, or deadly to achieve."

Tags: science

Atomic Extremeophiles Thrive Where the Life-Giving Energy of the Sun Never Reaches

Mon, 05 May 2008 14:14:19 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Life is incredible.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

"Life finds a way." Thanks to a research time involving Princeton, Indiana University, and others, that isn't just a sappy Disney quote - it's an incredible fact. They found extremophile bacteria buried over two miles into solid rock, where the life-giving energy of the sun never reaches - the energy every other species on Earth depends on. Instead they found their own power source - radiation!

The hardy organisms have a unique biology with a very refined palate, consuming the by-products of radioactive breakdown to stay alive. Uranium decay cracks water molecules apart, recombining into peroxide (which you might know as bleach). This combines with fool's gold (pyrite) to release ions, which the cells' specialized metabolism can derive energy from. To summarize: these things sit on uranium, drink bleach and eat solid rock, thereby making every single "Iron Stomach" contest in human history look like a day at the buffet. Hell, these things make Batman look like a daycare attendant.

Tags: science

Tornado in Outer Space Sighted

Mon, 05 May 2008 14:10:17 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Looks like one anyway. Just gases etc doing their thing.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Physicist Giovanni Fazio of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has spotted tornadoes in space. With the help of his infrared camera on board NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers discovered what looked like a tornado in space. Fazio believes the spirals may be the first step in the formation of a new star. The structure, observed with NASA's Spitzer infrared telescope, is a shock wave created by a jet of material slamming on a cloud of interstellar gas and dust at more than 100 miles per second, heating the cloud and causing it to glow. Physicists say the jet may have been generated by magnetic field.

"I was responsible for building one of the cameras on board there that took this picture of the tornado," Fazio, told reporters. "We were quite surprised when I saw it. I never saw anything like this before in my life."

Tags: space

Diatoms Discovered To Remove Phosphorus From Oceans

Mon, 05 May 2008 14:06:47 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Does this mean that the ocean will no longer sparkle for honeymooners. I hope not.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

ScienceDaily (May 5, 2008) — Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered a new way that phosphorus is naturally removed from the oceans – its stored in diatoms. The discovery opens up a new realm of research into an element that’s used for reproduction, energy storage and structural materials in every organism. Its understanding is vital to the continued quest to understand the growth of the oceans. The research appears in the May 2, 2008 edition of the journal Science.

Ellery Ingall, associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, along with Ph.D. student Julia Diaz, collected organisms and sediments along an inlet near Vancouver Island in British Columbia. During their investigation on the boat, Diaz used a traditional optical microscope to discover that diatoms, microscopic organisms that live in oceans and damp surfaces, were storing blobs of very dense concentrations of phosphorus called polyphosphates.

Tags: science

Melting defects could lead to smaller, more powerful microchips

Mon, 05 May 2008 13:23:12 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: So you now have to have a gas flame thrower in case the chips needs melting so that the contacts meet.

Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

These electron microscope images show before (left column) and after (right column) examples of a new technique, developed at Princeton University, for perfecting nanometer-scale structures.
Click here for more information.

As microchips shrink, even tiny defects in the lines, dots and other shapes etched on them become major barriers to performance. Princeton engineers have now found a way to literally melt away such defects, using a process that could dramatically improve chip quality without increasing fabrication cost.

The method, published in the May 4 issue of Nature Nanotechnology, enables more precise shaping of microchip components than what is possible with current technology. More precise component shapes could help manufacturers build smaller and better microchips, the key to more powerful computers and other devices.

Tags: computers, flame, throwers

Climate change warms Arctic, cools Antarctica

Mon, 05 May 2008 10:02:25 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: In the north we have global warming, in the south we have global cooling. In the middle is global weirding. Now, is everyone happy?

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Arctic and Antarctica are poles apart when it comes to the effects of human-fueled climate change, scientists said on Friday: in the north, it is melting sea ice, but in the south, it powers winds that chill things down.

The North and South poles are both subject to solar radiation and rising levels of climate-warming greenhouse gases, the researchers said in a telephone briefing. But Antarctica is also affected by an ozone hole hovering high above it during the austral summer.

"All the evidence points toward human-made effects playing a major role in the changes that we see at both poles and evidence that contradicts this is very hard to find," said Jennifer Francis, an atmospheric scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Tags: climate

How Fraud Fueled the Mortgage Crisis

Mon, 05 May 2008 09:51:13 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Brokers pushed borrowers to lie, lenders misled and ratings agencies looked the other way.
Free range banking can't be allowed while greed is the sole motivator.

Clip Source: www.truthout.org

The debate over what caused the mortgage mess and how best to fix it is now taking a sharp turn, as new problems surrounding liar's loans and payment-option mortgages reveal the pervasive fraud, lying and deceit that permeated the market at its height.

As loans made to borrowers with decent credit begin to fail at a surprisingly rapid rate, it's becoming clear that widespread fraud helped support the entire mortgage system - from borrowers who lied on their loans, to brokers who encouraged it, to lenders who misled some low income borrowers, to the many lenders, investors and ratings agencies that conveniently and deliberately looked the other way as profits rolled in.

Tags: economics, fraud, who, pays

Internet serves up 30 years of spam

Mon, 05 May 2008 08:42:04 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: 100 billion spam messages are sent everyday, Is that all, you say?

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the computer phenomenon - spam email.

Now a nuisance for tens of millions of computer users worldwide, three decades ago someone sent what is considered to be the very first spam email.

Now 100 billion spam messages are sent everyday - three quarters of all the messages sent.

They are expensive to block and can slow down or crash computers across continents.

Spam reputedly got its name from a skit by the British television comedy show Monty Python's Flying Circus, in which a group of Vikings in a restaurant that serves all of its food with spam tinned meat, sing a song repeating the word ad nauseam.

Tags: computer

West in midst of 'irrational fear' epidemic

Mon, 05 May 2008 08:30:43 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: On reading this I was motivated to say "No shit Cecil!"

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

We humans - especially those in the Western world - have never been healthier or freer from risk.

Yet according to Canadian author Dan Gardner, the Western world is in the midst of an epidemic of irrational fear.

The Canadian journalist has just published his book Risk: The Science and Politics Of Fear, in which he describes the growth of an unreasoning fear in all countries in the Western world and warns that this fear is causing us to make foolish, and at times, deadly decisions when we deal with everyday risks.

Mr Gardner says one of the most compelling examples of the dangers of irrational fear is the response of US travellers to the September 11 attacks.

"The difference in safety between driving and flying is enormous. Flying is vastly safer than driving," he said.

"So after the September 11 attacks, enormous numbers of Americans fled the airports and of course they still had to get around, so they started driving instead.

Tags: amazing, grace