Science & TechnologyS


Eye 1

Coming Soon: Retroactive Surveillance on Anyone

eye graphic
© n/a
As the price of digital storage drops and the technology to tap electronic communication improves, authoritarian governments will soon be able to perform retroactive surveillance on anyone within their borders, according to a Brookings Institute report.

These regimes will store every phone call, instant message, email, social media interaction, text message, movements of people and vehicles and public surveillance video and mine it at their leisure, according to "Recording Everything: Digital Storage as an Enabler of Authoritarian Government", written by John Villaseno, a senior fellow at Brookings and a professor of electrical engineering at UCLA.

That will enable shadowing people's movements and communications that took place before the individuals became suspects, he says.

"For example, if an anti-regime demonstrator previously unknown to security services is arrested, it will be possible to go back in time to scrutinize the demonstrator's phone conversations, automobile travels, and the people he or she met in the months and even years leading up to the arrest," the report says.

Telescope

Supermassive Black Hole Will "Eat" Gas Cloud

Gas black hole
© ESO/MPE/M SchartmannSimulations suggest that the cloud will be ripped to bits and partially swallowed by the black hole

Researchers have spotted a giant gas cloud spiralling into the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's centre.

Though it is known that black holes draw in nearby material, it will be the first chance to see one consume such a cloud.

As it is torn apart, the turbulent area around the black hole will become unusually bright, giving astronomers a chance to learn more about it.

An article in Nature suggests the spectacle should be visible in 2013.

Researchers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope estimate that despite its size, the cloud has a total mass of only about three times that of Earth.

They have plotted the cloud's squashed, oval-shaped path and estimate it has doubled its speed in the last seven years - to 2,350km per second.

Sherlock

Second-Oldest Gene Mutation relates Arabs, Turks, and Sephardic Jews

Columbus, Ohio,US: A new study has identified a gene mutation that researchers estimate dates back to 11,600 B.C., making it the second oldest human disease mutation yet discovered.

Researchers with the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute led the study and estimate that the mutation arose in the Middle East some 13,600 years ago. Only a mutation seen in cystic fibrosis that arose between 11,000 and 52,000 years ago is believed to be older.

The investigators described the mutation in people of Arabic, Turkish and Jewish ancestry. It causes a rare, inherited vitamin B12 deficiency called Imerslund-Gräsbeck Syndrome (IGS).

The researchers say that although the mutation is found in vastly different ethnic populations, it originated in a single, prehistoric individual and was passed down to that individual's descendents. This is unusual because such "founder mutations" usually are restricted to specific ethnic groups or relatively isolated populations.

Green Light

US: California Moves to Put 1.4M Zero Emissions Vehicles on Roads by 2025

Image
© Tesla MotorsTesla Model S
CARB is taking public comment on proposed standards now

California has been working with the federal government on the CAFE fuel economy standards while at the same time working inside the state government to improve the air quality. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has now confirmed more plans to help improve the air quality in the state and that plan involves mandates to get more electric vehicles onto the market. The plan calls for 1.4 million more electric and plug-in vehicles as well as hydrogen powered cars to hit the roads.

The new standards are expected to cover 2017 to 2025 model year vehicles. The plan wants to reduce greenhouse gas emission from vehicles by 34% compared with the levels set for 2016 and to drive more purchases of EVs. CARB says that the new rules will add $1,900 to the price of a new vehicle by 2025, but the efficiency will save $6,000 in fuel costs over the vehicles life.

If the 1.4 million zero emission or plug-in hybrid vehicle number is reached that would mean one in seven or 15% of all new vehicles sold would be that type of vehicle. Automakers selling cars in California would need to make 15.4% of their entire fleets ZEVs to meet the proposed standards. The rules would also force all passenger cars and light trucks sold in California to reach the state super-ultra-low emission vehicle standards by 2025. If approved by the California Office of Administrative Law, the regulations would become law in 2012.

The proposed rules by the State of California aren't good enough for the Union of Concerned Scientists reports the NYT. This union wants to increase the proposed standard by 30% and put 1.8 million zero emission vehicles on the roads by 2025. A public comment period on CARBs proposal is going until December 12.

Info

Democracy May Depend on the Ignorant

School of Fishes
© Melvin Lee | ShutterstockWhen deciding on a direction to swim in, a few uninformed fish may sway the group toward the majority opinion, new research finds.

Ignorance can be bliss, but it seems it can also promote democracy.

Strongly opinionated members can determine a group's consensus decision, even when they make up only a small minority. New research of animal behavior shows, however, that adding ignorant or uninformed members to the group can counteract the minority's powerful influence and promote a more democratic outcome.

Researchers used several computer models to investigate the decision-making process in various animal groups when a majority wants to travel in one direction and a minority wants to go in another.

When the strength of the two packs' preferences was equal, the group was much more likely to follow the majority. But when the minority had stronger feelings than the rest of the group about its direction, it was able to control the decision.

When the researchers added a third crowd that was ignorant of the options, the majority was able to spontaneously wrestle the decision back from the minority.

"It's very counterintuitive," said Iain Couzin, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University, who was lead author of the study published in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Science. "We previously assumed that uninformed individuals promote extremism by being easily exploited by the [strong] minority."

Info

Big Question For 2012: Will We Talk to the Animals?

Dolphin
© Amy T
This year, enormous strides have been made in understanding non-human animal vocalizations. But will we ever be able to hold meaningful conversations with another species, such that both sides understand each other?

Consider what we've learned about dolphins recently. Research a few months ago determined that dolphins talk like humans in terms of the physical process. Previously it was thought that many dolphin calls were just simple whistles, but the study found the sounds are produced by tissue vibrations analogous to the operation of vocal folds by humans.

Acoustics engineer John Stuart Reid and Jack Kassewitz of the organization Speak Dolphin have created an instrument known as the CymaScope that reveals detailed structures within sounds, allowing their architecture to be studied pictorially.

Similar to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs, the researchers may then be able to figure out the meaning of dolphin calls. In addition to the whistle-like sounds, dolphins produce chirps and click trains, suggesting they engage in very complex and sophisticated social interactions.

Info

Modified Cotton Cleans Itself When Exposed to Sunlight

Self Cleaning Cotton
© Mike Lacon via FlickrClothesline.
Future shirts and socks could clean themselves using just sunlight, chemists report - all you'll have to do is drape them over the balcony and voila, clean laundry. A coating of titanium dioxide makes this possible.

Titanium dioxide is found in products like solar panels and sunscreen - it absorbs ultraviolet light - and in several cleaning products, because it can be used to oxidize organic material. Cement, paint, windows and even odor-free socks contain TiO2, which is prized for its ability to kill microbes and break down dirt.

Other researchers have incorporated titanium dioxide into clothes before, but they don't get clean unless exposed to ultraviolet light, which isn't exactly practical. Mingce Long of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Deyong Wu of the Hubei University for Nationalities in Hubei, China, set out to create clothing with titanium dioxide coating that can self-clean using only sunlight.

Meteor

The Sahara's 100-Million-Year-Old Kebira Impact Crater

Kebira Crater
© Boston University Center for Remote Sensing Landsat image of the Kebira Crater in the Great Sahara Desert of Egypt at the border with Libya.

Boston University scientists sifting through satellite photos found the largest crater seen to date in the Great Sahara Desert of North Africa. The 100-million-year old crater, known as Kebira, which means "large" in Arabic, is 19 miles wide.

The crater is on the northern tip of the Gilf Kebir region of southwestern Egypt near Libya. The meteorite that gouged out Kebira probably was three-quarters of a mile wide. The terrain around the crater is 100 million year-old sandstone. Two ancient rivers run through the crater site from the east and west.
The shock of such a large object crashing into Earth tens of millions of years ago may have left behind the field of yellow-green silica chips - the mysterious desert glass - seen today on the surface among the giant dunes of the Great Sand Sea in southwestern Egypt.

As a geologist who had spent most of his career studying the Earth's major deserts, Dr. Farouk El-Baz, now the director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, knew that the glass formed after a massive meteorite hit the desert with enough energy to splatter chunks of melted sand across the extensive fields where fragments are common today. But beyond the glass, no evidence of such an impact had ever been found. El-Baz decided to take another look at satellite data of the Western Desert to see if he could find the elusive crater.

Info

Surprising Christmas Island Seamounts Mystery Solved

Seamount Province
© Nature Geoscience/Hoernle, et al. A map of the Christmas Island Seamount Province with seamount locations and plate motions.

If you ever find yourself on a leisurely submarine ride through the northeastern Indian Ocean, be on the lookout for some amazing views: more than 50 large seamounts, or underwater mountains, dot the ocean floor, some rising as high as 3 miles (4,500 meters).

The Christmas Island Seamount Province, as the area is known, spans a 417,000-square-mile (1 million square kilometers) swath of seafloor.

Just how the massive underwater structures got there has been up for debate, but some new geochemical detective work may have solved the mystery.

The seamounts are made of recycled rocks from the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana, said geochemist Kaj Hoernle of the University of Kiel in Germany. Their turbulent geological history explains the massive size and puzzling placement of these features.

Ubiquitous and mysterious

Tens of thousands of seamounts line the floors of the world's oceans, but exactly how most of these formed is unclear.

Some, like the Hawaiian - Emperor seamount chain that extends northwest from the Hawaiian Islands, formed over hotspots in the mantle, just as the islands themselves did. Other seamount chains were created when tectonic plate boundaries and other fractures in the ocean crust allowed lava to escape and harden at the surface.

But the Christmas Island Seamount Province doesn't fit either of these models, Hoernle said. The structures are too widespread and diffuse to have formed over a single hotspot; they're also aligned perpendicularly along breaks in the ocean crust, which means they didn't form above a fracture.

"We knew they were volcanic," Hoernle told OurAmazingPlanet, "but beyond that, it was more or less a mystery."

Bizarro Earth

Japan Megaquake Shifted Gravity Satellite Orbits

satellite
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The Tōhoku earthquake that rattled Japan on 11 March changed Earth's gravitational field enough to affect the orbits of satellites. The satellites' altered courses suggest that the earthquake was stronger and deeper than instruments on Earth indicated.

These weren't just any satellites: they are the twin spacecraft of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), which fly 220 kilometres apart in a polar orbit about 500 kilometres above Earth. GRACE's job is to map the Earth's gravity field, and it does this by monitoring the effect of minute variations in the field on the trajectories of the satellites and the changing distance between them.

Earth's gravity field changes whenever there is a redistribution of mass on its surface. This may be a result of snowfall, flood, melting of ice caps - or earthquakes. "That perturbed gravitational field affects the satellite orbits," explains Shin-Chan Han of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.