Science & TechnologyS


MIB

Universal 'Rubik's Cube' Could Become Pentagon Shapeshifter

Noah Shachtman
Signal Magazine
Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:44 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Even by the standards of the Pentagon fringe science arm, this project sounds far-out: "" that can be ordered to "self-assemble or alter their shape, perform a function and then disassemble themselves." But researchers back by Darpa are actually making progress on this incredible goal, Henry Kenyon at Signal magazine reports.

One day, that could lead to "morphing aircraft and ground vehicles, uniforms that can alter themselves to be comfortable in any climate, and 'soft' robots that flow like mercury through small openings to enter caves and bunker complexes." A soldier could even reach into a can of unformed goop, and order up a custom-made tool or a "universal spare part."
Read More...
People

Just a few on Twitter do all the tweeting: study

Erin Kutz
Reuters
Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:27 UTC
A tiny fraction of those who use the fast-growing social network phenomenon Twitter generate nearly all the content, a Harvard study shows.

That makes it hard for companies to use the micro-blogging site as an accurate gauge of public opinion, the Harvard Business School study showed.

Twitter Inc is a social networking website in which users post messages of 140 characters or less -- known as "tweets" -- that can be viewed by other users who elect to follow them.

The Harvard study examined public entries of a randomly selected group of 300,000 Twitter users. The researchers studied in May the content created in the lifetime of the users' Twitter accounts.
Read More...
Eye 1

Internet Voting: How Far Can We Go Safely?

Ed Felten
Freedom to Tinker
Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:38 UTC
Yesterday I chaired an interesting panel on Internet Voting at CFP. Participants included Amy Bjelland and Craig Stender (State of Arizona), Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat (Overseas Vote Foundation) Avi Rubin (Johns Hopkins), and Alec Yasinsac (Univ. of South Alabama). Thanks to David Bruggeman and Cameron Wilson at USACM for setting up the panel.

Nobody advocated a full-on web voting system that would allow voting from any web browser. Instead, the emphasis was on more modest steps, aimed specifically at overseas voters. Overseas voters are a good target population, because there aren't too many of them -- making experimentation less risky -- and because vote-by-mail serves them poorly.

Discussion focused on two types of systems: voting kiosks, and Internet transmission of absentee ballots.
Read More...
Star

New Class Of Dim Supernovae


Science Daily
Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:56 UTC
supernova SN 2008ha
© Stefan Taubenberger, Max Planck Institut for AstrophysicsColour image of supernova SN 2008ha taken on 2008 December 30 at Calar Alto Observatory, with the Zeiss 2.2m Telescope and camera CAFOS. It is a composite of the B, V and R bands. The SN is the faint reddish dot marked with an arrow. The quite irregular shape of the galaxy UGC 12682, that hosts the supernova, is seen at the centre of the image
Core-collapse (or gravitational) supernovae are among the most energetic and violent events in the universe. They constitute the final tremendous explosions that end the life cycles of stars more massive than approximately 8 times the Sun. After running out of fuel, the core of such a star collapses and forms a neutron star or a black hole. At the same time, the outer layers are ejected at high velocity (up to 10% of the speed of light) and shine as brightly as billions of stars together.

The total energy suddenly released by such a typical supernova exceeds the total energy release of the Sun during its whole past and future life time of 10 billion years.

However, some core-collapse supernovae are up to 100 times less energetic and luminous than usual. These low-power explosions normally show the presence of hydrogen gas, but a new event, supernova SN 2008ha, is the first dim supernova in which no hydrogen could be detected. This research has been performed by an international team lead by the Italian astronomer Stefano Valenti (Queen's University in Belfast, United Kingdom), including scientists from Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (Germany), the National Institute for Astrophysics (Italy), and various other institutions.
Read More...
Attention

Priest: GMOs are going to create famine and hunger


National Catholic Reporter
Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:46 UTC
While the Pontifical Academy for Sciences discussed the pros of genetically modified organisms on Monday, Columban Missionary Fr. Sean McDonagh was across Rome making the case for the "con" point of view. McDonagh organized a small demonstration near the Piazza del Popolo, which was joined by a few left-of-center political movements in Italy. A large banner read, "No to GMOs, yes to food security," and a smaller sign addressed the Vatican gathering: "Pontifical Academy of Sciences, do not ally with those who, promoting GMOs, contribute to hunger in the world. Listen to the words of the Holy Father!" A well-known writer on environmental themes, McDonagh is a veteran Irish missionary who spent more than 20 years in the Philippines. He's an outspoken critic of GMOs; in 2003, he published Patenting Life? Stop! Is Corporate Greed Forcing us to Eat Genetically Engineered Food? McDonagh spoke to NCR on the margins of the demonstration.
Read More...
Blackbox

Free-floating black hole may solve space 'firefly' mystery

Rachel Courtland
New Scientist
Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:21 UTC
Image
© Barbary et al.The object responsible for the mysterious brightening seen in 2006 (right) is ordinarily too dim to detect (left).
A wandering black hole may have torn apart a star to create a strange object that brightened mysteriously and then faded from view in 2006, a new study suggests. But more than three years later, astronomers are still at a loss to explain all the features of the strange event.

The object, called SCP 06F6, was first spotted in the constellation Bootes in February 2006 in a search for supernovae by the Hubble Space Telescope. The object flared to its maximum brightness over about 100 days, a period much longer than most supernovae, which do so in just 20 days.

Further analysis of the object's spectrum in 2008 offered no more clues: SCP 06F6 seemed to resemble no known object, and astronomers couldn't even say whether the event originated in the Milky Way or beyond.
Read More...
Meteor

Arietid Meteor Shower


Space Weather
Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:09 UTC
Image
© UnknownThis image shows the area of sky around the Arietid radiant (indicated by a red dot) as seen from mid-northern latitudes at 4 a.m. on June 7th or 8th.
The annual Arietid meteor shower peaks this weekend on Sunday, June 7th. The Arietids are unusual because they are daytime meteors; the shower is most intense after sunrise. Early risers could spot a small number of earthgrazing Arietids during the dark hours before dawn on Sunday morning.

Every year in early June, hundreds of meteors streak across the sky. Most are invisible, though, because the sun is above the horizon while the shower is most intense. These daylight meteors are called the Arietids. They stream from a radiant point in the constellation Aries, which lies just 30 degrees from the Sun in June.

Arietid meteoroids hit Earth's atmosphere with a velocity of 39 km/s (87,000 mph). No one is sure where these meteoroids come from. Possibilities include sungrazing asteroid 1566 Icarus, Comet 96P/Machholz, and the Kreutz family of sungrazing comets. The debris stream is quite broad: Earth is inside it from late May until early July. In most years, the shower peaks on June 7th or 8th.
Read More...
Better Earth

Earth's clearest skies revealed

Anil Ananthaswamy
New Scientist
Sat, 06 Jun 2009 13:53 UTC
Image
© Keith Vanderlinde / National Science FoundationThe South Pole Telescope at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. Antarctica has possibly the clearest skies on Earth
Possibly the clearest skies on Earth have been found - but to exploit them, astronomers will have to set up a telescope in one of the planet's harshest climates.

Michael Ashley of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues wanted to find the best sites for astronomy on the Antarctic plateau. Combining observations from satellites and ground stations with climate models, they evaluated different factors that affect telescope vision, such as the amount of water vapour, wind speeds and atmospheric turbulence.

The team found that the plateau offers world-beating atmospheric conditions - as long as telescopes are raised above its frozen surface. The ice makes the lowest layers of air on the plateau much colder than those above, forming an "inversion layer" that, together with the strong local winds, can lead to severe turbulence. This would blur a telescope's images.
Read More...
Crusader

How to teach science to the pope

Michael Mason
Discover
Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:48 UTC
Vatican keeps tabs on science, integrates new research into theology

Brother Guy Consolmagno occupies a small space of heaven. A Jesuit brother and astronomer for the Vatican Observatory, he works at the observatory's headquarters at the pope's summer palace in Castel Gandolfo, a 45-minute train ride from Rome.

Castel Gandolfo sits on the high ground of Italy's Lazio region, perched above the exotic, sapphire-blue volcanic Lake Albano. The view you get is magical. "This is a good place for things like an occultation, like the transit of Venus in 2004," Consol­magno says. "We observed the comet hitting Jupiter because the first events were visible only from this part of the world."

Below the observatory's domed chamber are the offices that make up the rest of the Vatican Observatory. One study has bookshelves filled with hardbound journals all the way to the high ceiling. Consolmagno pulls one off a shelf and reads aloud: "Account of a new telescope by Mr. Isaac Newton." He shows me, then smiles. "I think he has a future," he says.
Read More...
Chalkboard

Iraqi Teen Solves 300-Year-Old Math Puzzle in 4 Months


Agence France-Presse
Thu, 28 May 2009 04:12 UTC
A 16-year-old Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden has cracked a maths puzzle that has stumped experts for more than 300 years, Swedish media reported on Thursday.

In just four months, Mohamed Altoumaimi has found a formula to explain and simplify the so-called Bernoulli numbers, a sequence of calculations named after the 17th century Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli, the Dagens Nyheter daily said.

Altoumaimi, who came to Sweden six years ago, said teachers at his high school in Falun, central Sweden were not convinced about his work at first.

"When I first showed it to my teachers, none of them thought the formula I had written down really worked," Altoumaimi told the Falu Kuriren newspaper.
Read More...