Science & TechnologyS


Bad Guys

US: Military Scientists Study Ionosphere

Bob Freeman
US Air Force News
Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:17 UTC
HAARP
© U.S. Air Force photo/Lance CheungMaster Sgt. Yolanda Hernandez, left, and Staff Sgt. Stephen S. Ensminger, electronic systems maintainers, stand under the sweeping dipoles on a Solar Radio Spectrograph. The SRS measures radio wavelengths between 25-75 MHz.
Washington -- At a facility in a remote part of south-central Alaska, the largest radio transmitter on Earth sends high-frequency signals into the ionosphere to help scientists better understand the influence of charged particles on radio communications and satellite surveillance systems.

Surprisingly, it also is able to create a mini-ionosphere.

"The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a program known as HAARP, is basically a joint Air Force-Navy program to investigate ionospheric physics and radio science," explained James Battis, HAARP program manager at the Air Force Research Laboratory, during a Feb. 24 interview on Pentagon Web Radio's audio webcast "Armed with Science: Research and Applications for the Modern Military."

Mr. Battis was joined in the interview by Craig Selcher, HAARP program manager at the Naval Research Laboratory, and Todd Pedersen, a senior research physicist at AFRL.
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Meteor

Tomorrow Includes A Lot Of Asteroids And Comets

Elisabeth Mittelb
Space Daily
Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:49 UTC
Dr.Allan
© DLRThe office at DLR Berlin, number 321, is the hub of all the activities of Dr Alan Harris. It is here that the threads of his largely international research work into comets and asteroids all come together.
"Surprise!" - Alan Harris loves this word. It really suits the character and profession of this 58-year old British scientist. With a Doctorate in Physics, this 'Senior Scientist' at the German Aerospace Center's Berlin-based Institute of Planetary Research (Institut fur Planetenforschung) works in the 'Asteroids and Comets' department. As a scientist, he knows that his research will always lead him to surprises and questions.

"I'll find that out at a later date - right now it's still unknown to me," he says with a grin. Even after 30 years of professional experience, Dr Harris believes that the ability to remain inquisitive and to be positively motivated about things is as important to a researcher as luck and good fortune.

Born in the industrial city of Birmingham, he has had an interest in astronomy since his earliest years: "Even as a child, I took an interest in the stars, and especially in watching the night sky. I kept on asking myself the same questions: what are they, where do they come from, and what do they mean? My mother was unable to answer these questions for me, so I derived most of my knowledge from books," says the man with the lively brown eyes.
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Info

Malaysia: Bujang Valley yields ancient monument

Himanshu Bhatt
The Sun Daily
Sun, 28 Mar 2010 14:55 UTC
Monument
© Sun2SurfAwe-inspiring... An aerial photograph of the mysterious Sungai Batu
Monument shows the precise geometrical patterns in its layers of circles
and squares, designed and constructed by the ancient civilisation of the
Bujang valley some 1,900 years ago.
Sungai Petani: Malaysian archaeologists have unearthed a 1,900-year-old monument built with detailed geometrical precision - possibly for sun worshipping by a lost civilisation of the Bujang Valley.

The astonishing find at a oil palm estate in Sungai Batu, Kedah, is the oldest man-made structure to be recorded in Southeast Asia.

The discovery, by a team from the Centre for Global Archaeological Research (CGAR) of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), was made within a three sq km area where fresh excavations are being made of the old Bujang Valley port settlement, now believed to have existed long before neighbouring empires like Sri Vijaya (700AD) and Majapahit (1200AD).

CGAR director, Assoc Prof Dr Mokhtar Saidin, told theSun his team was taken aback by the magnitude and significance of the find.

Made of clay bricks, the monument, which was built before 110AD, is bound to rewrite current understanding of the region's early history, as it points to an advanced culture pre-dating many Indianised kingdoms in Southeast Asia.
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Info

India: Temple built in early Pala period dug out

Hasibur Rahman Bilu
The Daily Star
Sun, 28 Mar 2010 14:48 UTC
Early Temple
© STARThe garvagriha of the eighth century Vishnu temple found during the recent excavation at Chandipur village in Birampur upazila of Dinajpur district, below, three terracotta statues found at the site.
Archaeologists of Jahan-girnagar University in Dhaka have recently dug out the first Hindu temple from the early Pala period in Bengal at Chandipur village in Birampur upazila of Dinajpur tentatively dating back to the 8th century.

No other Hindu temple of any kind dates from Pala period (eighth eleventh century) in Bengal, according to experts.

A team of students of the Department of Archaeology and experienced excavators from Mahasthan, directed by Swadhin Sen, assistant professor, Department of Archaeology, and led by Prof Syed Md Kamrul Ahsan of the same department, started digging on this archaeological mound locally known as "Tileshwarir Mound" in 2007.

A number of experts from India, France, England and Bangladesh from various fields including archaeology, geology and geomorphology are collaborating with the team. Archeologists exposed a cell with four pillars and a staircase leading into that cell along with other brick built structures on the eastern part of the mound and found huge amount of potsherds of Pala period and onward in previous season.
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Camera

Sunspot Conjunction


Space Weather
Sun, 28 Mar 2010 00:36 UTC
On Thursday in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, astrophotographer John Stetson and his son Peter observed a very rare event--a sunspot-space station conjunction:

Image
© John StetsonOn Thursday in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, astrophotographer John Stetson and his son Peter observed a very rare event--a sunspot-space station conjunction:
"We knew when to look thanks to a prediction from CalSky," says Stetson. "The International Space Station transited the solar disk in only 0.62 seconds. We managed to catch the station's silhouette just as it was passing sunspot 1057." Stetson has been photographing solar transits for years; he ranks this one as "the best yet."

As far as we know, this is the first time the ISS has been observed in conjunction with a big sunspot. Next up: How about a sunspot-space station eclipse? It is possible to anticipate such an event because CalSky shows sunspots in their transit prediction graphics. Astrophotographers, check the web site for opportunities.
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Blackbox

Meet X-woman: a possible new species of human

Ewen Callaway
New Scientist
Sun, 28 Mar 2010 00:22 UTC
Image
© Johannes Krause, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary AnthropologyHome sweet home. DNA analysis shows a finger bone discovered in the Denisova cave, southern Siberia, may be from a previously unrecognised, extinct human species
The human family tree may be in for a dramatic rewrite. DNA collected from a fossilised finger bone from Siberia shows it belonged to a mysterious ancient hominid - perhaps a new species.

"X-woman", as the creature has been named, last shared an ancestor with humans and Neanderthals about 1 million years ago but is probably different from both species. She lived 30,000 to 50,000 years ago.

"This is the tip of the iceberg," says Chris Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London who was not involved in the find. More hominids that are neither Neanderthal nor human are likely to be discovered in coming years, particularly in central and eastern Asia, he says.
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Evil Rays

Innovation? Market research wants to open your skull

Graham Lawton
New Scientist
Sun, 28 Mar 2010 00:16 UTC
In the basement room of a swanky private London club, a man in a baggy brown hat is watching an advert. Trailing from his hat is a bundle of wires connected to a laptop. Behind him, a screen displays a series of wiggly lines and what looks like a graphic equaliser. As the advert plays, the bars on the equaliser rise and fall with the action.

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X

Ridiculous, Bogus Products get "Energy Star" Certification

Clement Tan
The Columbus Dispatch
Sat, 27 Mar 2010 02:51 UTC
Federal investigators who submitted phony products, such as a gas-powered alarm clock, to the government's energy-efficiency certification program found it easy to obtain approval. They say the program is "vulnerable to fraud and abuse."

Investigators with the Government Accountability Office said they obtained Energy Star approval for 15 of 20 fictitious products they submitted for certification with fake energy-savings claims. Two were rejected, and three did not receive a response. Two of the products even received purchase requests from real companies because four bogus firms, developed for the investigation, were listed as program partners.

Among the phony products that obtained Energy Star certification was a "room air cleaner" that, in a picture prominently displayed on the Web site of a bogus company, showed an electric space heater with a feather duster and strips of flypaper attached to it.

"Certification controls were ineffective primarily because Energy Star does not verify energy-savings data reported by manufacturers," investigators said in a GAO report released yesterday. Work for the investigation, undertaken at the request of Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, started in June and did not involve products that already are certified.
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Red Flag

"Smart" meters' flaws aid hacking

Jordan Robertson
The Columbus Dispatch
Sat, 27 Mar 2010 02:51 UTC
Computer-security researchers say new "smart" meters that are designed to help deliver electricity more efficiently also have flaws that could let hackers tamper with the power grid in ways that had been impossible.

At the least, the vulnerabilities open the door for attackers to jack up strangers' power bills.

These flaws also could get hackers a key step closer to exploiting one of the most dangerous capabilities of the new technology: the ability to remotely turn someone else's power on and off.

The attacks could be pulled off by stealing meters - which can be situated outside a home - and reprogramming them. Or an attacker could sit near a home or business and wirelessly hack the meter from a laptop, according to Joshua Wright, a senior security analyst with InGuardians Inc. The firm was hired by three utilities to study their smart meters' resistance to attack.
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Magnify

188 houses from Neolithic era unearthed in Middle Euphrates Region

Ruaa AL-Jazaeri
Global Arab Network
Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:23 UTC
Image
© UnknownTal Bokrous is a sample of the first agricultural village built according to the architectural style of the Stone Age in Deir Ezzor, (432 kms northeast of Damascus, Syria).
Tal Bokrous is a sample of the first agricultural village built according to the architectural style of the Stone Age in Deir Ezzor, (432 kms northeast of Damascus, Syria).

The site is the only archaeological discovery at the Middle Euphrates Region which belongs to the booming phase of the Neolithic era.

The Neolithic era (New Stone Age), was a period in the development of human technology, begining about 9500 BC in the Middle East that is traditionally considered the last part of the Stone Age.
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