Science & TechnologyS


Robot

Lost robot crosses city by asking directions

Colin Barras
New Scientist
Wed, 13 May 2009 19:22 UTC
Robots are getting better at finding their way around unknown areas, and making their own maps as they explore. But robots lost in urban areas don't need to rely on their own faculties to get from place to place, German roboticists have shown.

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Telescope

Telescopes poised to spot air-breathing aliens

David Shiga
New Scientist
Sat, 16 May 2009 18:50 UTC
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© G. Bacon STSCI / ESA / NASAThe next generation of space telescopes will be capable of detecting "biosignatures" in the light from planets orbiting other stars
Signs of life on planets beyond our own solar system may soon be in our sights. Experiments and calculations presented at an astrobiology meeting last week reveal how the coming generation of space telescopes will for the first time be capable of detecting "biosignatures" in the light from planets orbiting other stars.

Any clues about life on these exoplanets will have to come from the tiny fraction of the parent star's light that interacts with the planet on its journey towards Earth. The Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have both detected gases such as carbon dioxide and water vapour in the atmospheres of a handful of gas-giant exoplanets as they pass in front of their parent stars. The gas molecules absorb light at characteristic wavelengths, and this shows up as dark lines in the spectrum of the starlight which has been filtered through the planet's atmosphere. But seeing evidence of life - so-called biosignatures - in the spectrum of worlds small enough to be rocky like Earth is beyond the sensitivity of these instruments.
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Attention

Scientists Developing Memory-Erasing Drug

David Gutierrez
Natural News
Fri, 15 May 2009 18:00 UTC
Scientists have renewed the controversy over the bounds to which psychiatric drugs should be allowed to go, with research into a drug designed to erase unpleasant memories.

"Removing bad memories is not like removing a wart or a mole," said medical ethics lecturer Daniel Sokol of St. George's, University of London. "It will change our personal identity, since who we are is linked to our memories. It may perhaps be beneficial in some cases, but before eradicating memories, we must reflect on the knock-on effects that this will have on individuals, society and our sense of humanity."

Researchers have said that the new drug could help in the treatment of phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder or other memory-related psychological distress.
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Arrow Down

Craigslist dropping 'erotic services' ads


NineMSN
Thu, 14 May 2009 13:06 UTC
Craigslist is dropping its "erotic services" ads and creating a new "adult" category that will be reviewed by employees of the online classified service, the Illinois attorney general's office said.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan was informed of Craigslist's decision to stop running "erotic services" ads in a telephone call with representatives of the San Francisco-based company, her office said in a statement.

Madigan's office said Craigslist had stopped accepting "erotic services" ads from late Tuesday and that all ads posted on the site would expire within seven days.
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Binoculars

Facebook moves to quash 'phishing' scam


NineMSN
Sat, 16 May 2009 11:44 UTC
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© UnknownFacebook says they are already blocking links to "phishing" sites set up by hackers.
Facebook is blocking links to bogus websites set up to look like the home page of the popular social network in a "phishing" attack by hackers.

"We're aware of the attack and are already blocking links to these new phishing sites from being shared on Facebook," the Palo Alto, California, company said on Friday.

"We're also cleaning up phony messages and wall posts and resetting the passwords of affected users," it said.

Facebook did not say how many of the 200 million users of the social network had been affected in the latest hacker attack.
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Control Panel

Google glitch disrupts search and email


NineMSN
Fri, 15 May 2009 08:20 UTC
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© UnknownThe Google glitch that prevented some people from using the search engine and email has been fixed.
Google says it has fixed the technical problems that have prevented an unknown number of people from using its internet search engine, email and other services.

Google hasn't provided specifics on what went wrong.

In a Thursday post on its website, the Mountain View-based company reported that a "small subset of users" weren't able to get into their email accounts and that those troubles might have affected other services as well.

Multiple messages posted on Twitter, a popular information-sharing forum, have indicated that people all over the world have had trouble with the Google search engine and email. But other Twitter users say their Google services have been running smoothly.
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Binoculars

Rocket departs on Big Bang mission


NineMSN
Sat, 16 May 2009 09:33 UTC
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© UnknownA rocket has blasted off carrying the largest telescope ever that will gather data on the Big Bang
A rocket has blasted off near the jungles of French Guiana carrying the largest telescope ever launched into space on a mission that European scientists hope will help unravel the mystery of the universe's creation.

The Ariane-5 rocket was loaded with the Herschel space telescope and the Planck spacecraft, carrying a payload of 4.81 tonnes when it launched from the city of Kourou on Thursday.

The Herschel will study the formation of stars and galaxies, while the Planck will gather data on remaining radiation from the Big Bang, the massive cosmological explosion that many scientists believe formed the stars and planets.

Dozens of officials with the European Space Agency, which is sponsoring the mission, clapped and hugged each other as the telescope and craft separated successfully about 25 minutes after takeoff.
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Magnify

New search tool WolframAlpha to launch


NineMSN
Sat, 16 May 2009 07:07 UTC
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© PingsweptStephen Wolfram
Google rules the roost when it comes to internet search and has easily brushed aside efforts by Yahoo!, Microsoft and others to knock it off its perch.

While not a traditional web search engine, a new challenger is emerging on Friday - WolframAlpha, named after the man behind the venture, British-born scientist and inventor Stephen Wolfram.

Wolfram, who earned a PhD in theoretical physics from Caltech at the age of 20, is careful not to call his latest invention a search engine, describing it instead as a "computational knowledge engine".

Unlike Google, which takes a query and uses algorithms to return a series of links to relevant websites, WolframAlpha.com takes a query and crunches through its databases to return answers.
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Display

Software to track our emotional outbursts

Tom Simonite
New Scientist
Mon, 11 May 2009 16:50 UTC
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© Fotex/Rex FeaturesThere isn't always someone there to temper your online outbursts, but software might help.
The internet allows anyone with the appropriate hardware to freely express themselves to the world at large using a website or blog. But we are not sharing our thoughts with only other humans: web pages are read by software agents all the time, including search engine spiders and spambots.

Now a new kind of agent is starting to roam the web that can understand the emotional content of what we write - and they could soon arrive on your desktop too.

These "sentiment analysis" tools are a branch of a wider area of computer science that is trying to teach computers to understand the feelings expressed in text just as well as humans do, and the commercial applications of such technology are already starting to be realised.

The early adopters of these tools are the owners of big brand names in a world where company reputations are affected by customer blogs as much as advertising campaigns. A small but growing group of firms is developing tools that can trawl blogs and online comments, gauging the emotional responses brought about by the company or its products.
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Evil Rays

Radiation Review: Some People May be 'Allergic' to Cell Phones, Computers


Physorg.com
Fri, 15 May 2009 21:35 UTC
Cell phone tower
© Wikimedia CommonsCell phone tower in Nyakrom, Agona District, Ghana
How exactly does the radiation from electromagnetic fields (EMF) affect the human body? Is it possible that cell phones, computer monitors, TVs, and other electronic devices - which operate within current EMF safety standards - cause illnesses, or are the people who claim to be sensitive to these devices just paranoid? The topic is one of the most controversial subjects in technology today, having important consequences in politics, consumerism, human rights, and health costs.

Olle Johansson, an associate professor and head of the Experimental Dermatology Unit, Department of Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, has been investigating the effects of electromagnetic fields on human physiology since the early '80s. Johansson's research has led him to become an outspoken supporter of the view that the dangers of EMF radiation from our gadgets are real, and that existing safety standards, which are based on acute thermal effects only, do not adequately protect public health.
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