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6 Cool European Electric Cars Never Coming to the US

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:48:53 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

European Coachbuilding Goes Electric

The European tradition of coachbuilding—the manufacturing of carriages—dates back to the 1700s. These days, it refers to the high-end auto design firms, such as Rolls Royce and Ferrari, which build custom-designed specialty vehicles.

Like nearly every automaker in the world, coachbuilders are going green, by designing and building all-electric vehicles. Their electric cars are well suited to the congested streets of Rome or Paris, but don’t hold your breath for these cool electricity-powered rides to make it across the pond. By nature, the coachbuilders produce vehicles in limited runs intended for local markets.

1Pininfarina B0 ("B Zero")

2UK Lightning

3Heuliez Friendly

4Heuliez Pondicherry

5Karmann Quicc DiVa

The Quicc DiVa is an all-electric urban distribution van. The body is made of plastic.

6Ford F-150 Ha-Pa

The Hi-Pa Drive system, built in the UK, can be applied to existing vehicle formats.

Tags: hybrid cars, electric

Google Hosts 10 Million Historic Time-Life Photos

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:25:59 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: lifehacker.com

Google announced today that they're now hosting around 10 million photos from the LIFE photo archives on Google Image search. You can search the photos—which range from the 1750s to present day—directly from the LIFE photo archive start page, or you can simply include source:life with any Google Image search query. If you give it a spin, share some of your favorite photos in the comments.

Tags: google, photos

NC Cops Taser Pallbearer Son At His Father's Funeral

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:52:41 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: Five (5!) cops face discipline. Each should be certified as a moron.

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Five sheriff's deputies will be disciplined after they used a Taser while serving an arrest warrant on a man at his father's funeral, a North Carolina sheriff said Wednesday.

Gladwyn Taft Russ III was serving as a pallbearer at the Saturday service and was loading his father's casket into a hearse when the undercover deputies approached him.

Relatives said two deputies dressed in coats and ties grabbed Russ and kneed him in his back before using a Taser on him. One deputy's gun fell out of its holster.

"Everybody was so scared. We thought it was a drug deal gone bad," said Ronnie Simmons, another pallbearer and Russ' brother-in-law. "We almost dropped the casket."

New Hanover County Sheriff Sid Causey told The Star-News of Wilmington that five of the officers involved would be disciplined, although he wouldn't say what punishment they would face.

Russ, 42, had failed to surrender after being charged

After his father died on Nov. 11, Russ agreed to surrender to authorities after the funeral.

10 Most Popular Mysteries in History

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:04:20 GMT

clipped by: sahara

Clip Source: www.uphaa.com

Rongorongo

Easter Island

‘Rongorongo’ is the hieroglyphic written

of the region’s earlier inhabitants

Lost City of Helike

The city, capital of the Achaean League, was a worship centre devoted to the ancient god Poseidon, god of the sea

The Bog Bodies

The bog bodies are hundreds of ancient corpses found buried around the northern bogs and wetlands of Northern Europe. These bodies are remarkably well preserved, some dating back 2,000 years. Many of these bodies have tell-tale signs of torture and other medieval “fun”, which have made some researchers postulating that these unfortunate victims were the result of ritual sacrifices

Fall of the Minoans

While many historians concentrate on the fall of the Roman Empire, the fall of the Minoans, who resided on the island of Crete, is an equal, if not greater mystery

The Carnac Stones

Who Was Robin Hood ?

The Lost Roman Legion

The Voynich Manuscript

The Tarim Mummies

Disappearance of the Indus Valley Civilization

reconstruct woolly mammoth's genome

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:25:32 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: The most interesting thing here is to note the acceleration of technology and it becoming cheaper and available.

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Hair from frozen carcasses used to reconstruct woolly mammoth's genome

A 10,000-year-old baby mammoth dug from the Siberian

Scientists have decoded the genome of the woolly mammoth by analysing hairs plucked from carcasses recovered from the Siberian permafrost.

The achievement is a startling sign of the rapid progress genetics has made in recent decades. In 2003, scientists announced that the 13-year effort to read the human genome had finally been completed, at a cost of around $2.6 billion. The mammoth genome was read at one laboratory in less than a year at a cost of just over $1m.

Theoretically, it would be possible to recreate a mammoth by genetically modifying an elephant embryo to carry all of the 400,000 important genetic differences that exist between the species. With today's technology, however, scientists can only make one genetic change at a time.

Next year, scientists are expected to reveal the full genetic code of our own most recent ancestor, the Neanderthal

Tags: history, evolution, genes

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is stark raving mad

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:09:43 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks: Denies she ever called for investigation of "anti-America" colleagues in Congress.

Clip Source: crooksandliars.com

Colmes: You said you were concerned during the campaign that Obama had anti American views and you said the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look at the people and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America

Bachmann: Actually that's not what I said. It's an urban legend that was created and that's not what I said.

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: waiting for 2010

Ancient Turtle Discovered on the Isle of Skye

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:19:26 GMT

clipped by: cakebelly

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

The new turtle species is a missing link between land and water-based turtles

The earliest turtles known to live in water have been discovered on a Scottish island.

The 164 million-year-old reptile fossils were found on a beach in southern Skye, off the UK's west coast.

The new species forms a missing link between ancient terrestrial turtles and their modern, aquatic descendants.

The discovery of Eileanchelys waldmani, which translates as "the turtle from the island", is reported in the Royal Society journals.

The turtles were found embedded in a block of rock at the bay of Cladach a'Ghlinne, on the Strathaird peninsula.

It contained four well-preserved turtle skeletons, and the remnants of at least two others.

Together, these are the most complete Middle Jurassic turtles described to date.

The historic specimens are now being housed in the National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh.

They were uncovered by a team from London's Natural History Museum and University College London (UCL).

An Algorithm with No Secrets

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:32:59 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: A hash algorithm turns an ordinary message into a "digital fingerprint," which can then be used to keep the original message secret during transit or to guarantee that it hasn't been tampered with en route. But a hash function is only considered secure if there is no practical way to run it backward and find the original message from the fingerprint. Equally important, there should be no trivial way to produce two messages with exactly the same fingerprint. The weaknesses discovered by Wang and others relate to this problem--something cryptographers call "a collision." The latter issue is complicated by the fact that it is impossible to completely avoid collisions. So the best algorithm is one that simply makes collisions extremely hard to produce. "You shouldn't be able to find them," says William Burr, manager of the Security Technology Group for NIST. "The computation should be too great."

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

Cryptographers will compete to define a new standard.

Cryptographers from around the world have laid their best work on the line in a contest to find a new algorithm that will become a critical part of future communications across the Internet. The winning code will become a building block of a wide variety of Internet protocols, including those used to safeguard communications between banks and their customers. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) organized the competition and plans to release a short list of the best entries by the end of this month, beginning a four-year process of painstaking analysis to find the overall winner.

All this effort is necessary because the current standard--the Secure Hash Algorithm 2 (SHA-2)--is starting to show its age.

In 2005, Xiaoyun Wang, a professor at the Center for Advanced Study at Tsinghua University, in China, found weaknesses in several related hashing algorithms.

Tags: internet, security

SEEx, (science entertainment exchange :)

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:13:49 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: more:
"We are also well positioned to work with you on public policy issues that relate to science such as stem cell research, global climate change, and teaching about evolution and the nature of science. "

Very nice initiative.

Clip Source: www.scienceandentertainmentexchange.org

The Science & Entertainment Exchange is a program of the National Academy of Sciences that provides entertainment industry professionals with access to top scientists and engineers to help bring the reality of cutting-edge science to creative and engaging storylines.

Making a Difference through Collaboration

The portrayal of science – its practitioners, its methods, its effects – has often posed a challenge to the entertainment community

Likewise, the scientific community has struggled to find an effective conduit through which it can communicate its story accurately and effectively

The Science & Entertainment Exchange bridges this gap and addresses the mutual need of the two communities by providing the credibility and the verisimilitude

What Does The Science and Entertainment Exchange Do?

identify and effectively portray the science details that complement a storyline

flesh out ideas that depend upon accurate details relating to insects, extraterrestrial life

Tags: science, entertainment, collaboration

New imaging methods may help distinguish brain damage from psychiatric disorders

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:21:35 GMT

clipped by: einbar

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

Detecting Subtle Brain Injuries

New imaging methods may help distinguish brain damage from psychiatric disorders.

Researchers have shown that three novel imaging techniques can detect mild brain damage not visible using traditional methods. The findings will help scientists better define the type of damage that can lead to long-lasting memory and emotional problems, as well as help identify those who are most vulnerable to further trauma

Such tools are of great interest to the military, which needs ways to distinguish traumatic brain injury from post-traumatic stress disorder

The new imaging methods may also shed light on the effect of repeated mild brain trauma, such as concussion, for which soldiers and professional athletes are at risk

Mild traumatic brain injury is notoriously difficult to diagnose. The brains of concussion patients often look normal on CT scans, the most common test after head trauma, and "cognitive deficits can be subtle, even to a neurologist

Do you have any protection?

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:40:57 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar

Clip Source: www.smbc-comics.com

Tags: sex, cartoon, fun, funny, oops, i say no, 9 months