Science & TechnologyS


Laptop

ZoneAlarm caught using fake antivirus scare tactics

Check Point, a security company that offers various products to protect consumers and businesses, is imitating the tactics of fake antimalware programs. Over the last few days, ZoneAlarm users have been receiving a warning from their security software that tells them they are not protected against a new piece of malware. The warning is titled a "Global Virus Alert," shows "Your PC may be in danger!" in bright red, and urges the user to "SEE THREAT DETAILS" and "GET PROTECTION." The prompt is very poorly designed: it looks a lot like malware masquerading as an antivirus (in fact, we would say that newer fake antimalware prompts are more believable than ZoneAlarm's warning).

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Exhibit A: The alarmist Zone Alarm prompt

Sun

Egyptian Sunset and Sunspots

On Sept. 24th in Giza, Egypt, Aymen Ibrahem positioned himself in front of the Pyramid of King Khephren to photograph the sunset. "Every year, just after the autumnal equinox, the sun sets directly behind the east-west aligned Sphinx," he explains. "I knew it would be a great photo-op." His pictures, however, revealed more than he expected.
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© Aymen Ibrahem

"When I took a close look at the images, I found two sunspots," he says. Indeed, sunspots 1108 and 1109 are large enough to see without the amplification of a solar telescope. "Drifting clouds and the dusty air lowered the brightness of the sun enough for me to capture them using nothing more than my camera (a Sony DSC H5)."

Camera

Triple Rainbows

Double rainbows are commonplace. Sunlight reflected once inside raindrops produces the primary arc; sunlight reflected twice produces the secondary. Most people who have seen a single rainbow, have also seen a double.

But have you ever seen a triple? Daryl Pederson of Anchorage, Alaska, spotted one on Sept. 20th:

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© Daryl Pederson
"Here's something you don't see every day--three rainbows at once!" says Pederson. "The bonus third rainbow was caused by an image of the sun reflected from Potter's Marsh into the falling rain above."

Meteor

Mini-Ice Age Debate Rocking Geology World: Do Comets Cause Ice Ages?

Comets are believed by some experts to have wiped out megafauna species

The normally peaceable world of geology is currently alive with a fiery debate over the theory that deadly space rocks slammed into Northern Canada about 13,000 years ago, triggering a mini-Ice Age and the eventual extinction of the woolly mammoth and a host of other prehistoric species.

That contentious hypothesis - which has prompted a number of studies in recent years probing sites throughout North America for traces of the alleged extraterrestrial blast -is under renewed attack after a team of U.S. and British researchers published a paper last week arguing that previous claims of impact evidence are demonstrably mistaken.

The new study takes particular aim at several supposed discoveries of "nanodiamonds" at sites around North America -hailed by advocates of the impact theory as proof that a cosmic blast sent showers of "shocked" rock particles across the continent 13,000 years ago.

Meteor

Chilled Diamonds Shine Light on Comet Collision

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© James KennettJames Kennett, along with ETH Zurich researcher Gerald Haug, cut into the ice sheet in Greenland to retrieve samples from the glacial layers. The ice sheets serve as a striated window into the Earth’s past.
Scientists Brave Icy Environment to Find Evidence of Cosmic Cataclysm

A grueling journey across the ice sheets of Greenland has paid off for a team of scientists, who have located some diamonds in the rough glacial climate.

The 21-person team, which included UCSB professor emeritus James Kennett and his son, University of Oregon geology professor Douglas Kennett, recently published a paper in the Journal of Glaciology on their discovery of nano-sized diamonds in the ice sheet in a location near the city of Kangerlussuaq.

According to James Kennett, the expedition involved traversing a good amount of difficult terrain, as the ice sheets of Greenland are significantly remote.

"The area is cold, remote and [mostly] inaccessible," James Kennett said. "Looking for a potential layer of diamonds in an ice sheet is like trying to find a needle in a haystack."

Sun

Solar Storms Can Change Directions, Surprising Forecasters

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© NASA A coronal mass ejection (CME) observed by STEREO on Dec. 12, 2008.
Solar storms don't always travel in a straight line. But once they start heading in our direction, they can accelerate rapidly, gathering steam for a harder hit on Earth's magnetic field.

So say researchers who have been using data from NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft to unravel the 3D structure of solar storms. Their findings are presented in today's issue of Nature Communications.

"This really surprised us," says co-author Peter Gallagher of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. "Solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) can start out going one way - and then turn in a different direction."

The result was so strange, at first they thought they'd done something wrong. After double- and triple-checking their work on dozens of eruptions, however, the team knew they were onto something.

"Our 3D visualizations clearly show that solar storms can be deflected from high solar latitudes and end up hitting planets they might otherwise have missed," says lead author Jason Byrne, a graduate student at the Trinity Center for High Performance Computing.

Meteor

Flashback Comets and the Bronze Age Collapse

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© Unknown
. . . and from heaven a great star shall fall on the dread ocean and burn up the deep sea, with Babylon itself and the land of Italy, by reason of which many of the Hebrews perished,

. . . Be afraid, ye Indians and high-hearted Ethiopians: for when the fiery wheel of the ecliptic(?) . . . and Capricorn . . . and Taurus among the Twins encircles the mid-heaven, when the Virgin ascending and the Sun fastening the girdle round his forehead dominates the whole firmament; there shall be a great conflagration from the sky, falling on the earth;
Are these lines from Book V of the Sibylline Oracles eschatological nonsense? Contemporary astronomical evidence suggests a historic basis for words describing cosmic calamity. British astronomers, Victor Clube and Bill Napier, in The Cosmic Winter (1990) and other recent works, provide students of the past with newly discovered celestial clues which indicate that Earth has been periodically pelleted with comet fragments throughout the Holocene period. The evidence for the break-up of a large (> 50 km), short period (approximately 3.3 years), Earth-orbit-crossing comet is substantial and should be considered as hard as anything a trowel might turn up. What astronomical information cannot convey is the actual effect these periodic bombardment episodes had on human culture; only further digging and sifting will illuminate that aspect.

Book

Hitler at Home: Rare Color Photographs Show How the Nazi Leader Relaxed While He Waged War

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© Time & Life/Getty ImagesThe German leader eats a meal with Gertrud Deetz - the wife of Gauleiter Albert Forster, at the Berghof, Hitler's estate in Upper Bavaria in the late 1930s. Gertrude did not hear about her husband's death in 1949 until 1954
Relaxing with a cup of tea and sharing a joke with a crowd of admiring women - these are the rarely seen intimate portraits of Adolf Hitler at the height of his power.

The snapshots of the dictator were taken between 1936 and 1945 as the Nazi party strengthened its grip on Germany and then waged war against its European neighbours. While Hitler was demonized by Western 'allied' powers during and after the Second World War, up until late 1938 he was supported financially by the same powers and lauded as a 'statesman'.

In one series of pictures from 1939, Hitler is shown admiring his 50th birthday present - a specially designed convertible VW, which was given to him by Ferdinand Porsche.

He received the glossy black automobile at his Eagle's Nest home in the Alps. The mountain-based chalet was built as a retreat for Hitler and a place for him to entertain visiting dignitaries.

Info

Scientists Use Giant Laser to Measure Cloud Temperature

Measuring Cloud With Lasers
© Adelaide UniversityThe laser will be pointed into the sky above Davis Station in Antarctica.
The Australian Antarctic Division will use a giant laser to measure climate change in the atmosphere.

The laser will be pointed into the sky above Davis Station in Antarctica and will take the temperature of clouds that form almost 100 kilometres above the earth's surface.

Scientists say those clouds are more easily seen as the world warms up.

Jeff Cumpston operates one of the lasers at Davis Station.

"Our atmospheric dynamics are such that as we've got a warming troposphere - which is where we live - as that warms that in fact is interlinked with a phenomenon called global cooling up in the mesosphere above 50 kilometres," he said.

"And so we expect that with a cooler mesosphere we'll see an increased occurrence of these clouds."

Robot

Hair-Washing Robot Leaves Your Locks Silky-Smooth

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© PanasonicLie back and let those mechatronic fingers give your scalp some love.

Bad hair day? Now you can blame your robot. Panasonic has developed a hair-washing bot that lets you lie down while your locks are gently shampooed.

Designed for Japan's growing elderly and bedridden population, the device consists of a reclining chair and a computerized washbasin.

The machine incorporates robot hand technology, with 16 mechatronic magic fingers that rinse and wash hair. It also remembers each user's individual data, such as head shape and massage preferences.

According to a Panasonic release, a moving arm in the machine first scans your head in 3D to determine its shape and the optimal amount of force to use while shampooing (one hopes this is foolproof technology).