Chemistry Nobel for quasicrystals

"Israeli scientist Daniel Shechtman won the 2011 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for his discovery of quasicrystals, a mosaic-like chemical structure that researchers previously thought was impossible."

Source: http://mg.co.za/article/2011-10-05-israeli-wins-chemistry-nobel-for-quasicrystals/

Prehistoric Children Finger-Painted on Cave Walls

"As many exasperated parents have discovered, kids like to draw on walls. It turns out they’ve been doing it since the Stone Age, in some cases with the help and encouragement of grown-ups. Researchers have uncovered evidence that children as young as 2 decorated France’s Rouffignac caves with markings known as finger flutings at least 13,000 years ago, drawing not only simple lines but also symbolic shapes. The most prolific budding artist, thought to have been a 5-year-old girl, braved the pitch-dark caverns’ rocky terrain to hone her craft on high, remote corners—perched, perhaps, on the shoulders of an approving adult."

Source: http://www.history.com/news/2011/09/30/prehistoric-children-finger-painted-on-cave-walls/

Dogma breaking: speed of light

"A startling find at one of the world's foremost laboratories that a subatomic particle seemed to move faster than the speed of light has scientists around the world rethinking Albert Einstein and one of the foundations of physics.

Researchers at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research outside Geneva, who announced the discovery Thursday are still somewhat surprised themselves and planned to detail their findings on Friday.


Source: http://www.wpri.com/dpps/news/strange_news/roll-over-einstein-pillar-of-physics-challenged-ob11-jgr_3948307

Workers Find 7-Million-Year-Old Beaver Teeth

"The Bureau of Land Management says a fossil found by employees on federal land represents the earliest record of living beavers in North America.

The pair of teeth was found on BLM land in northeast Oregon.

The Albany Democrat-Herald reports the teeth come from the Rattlesnake Formation and are 7 to 7.3 million years old.


Source: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/18/workers-find-7-million-year-old-beaver-teeth-in-oregon/

Marco Polo never reached China

"The doubters told Italian history magazine Focus Storia that there were numerous inconsistencies and inaccuracies in Marco Polo’s  description of Kublai Khan’s attempted invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281.

'In his account of the first invasion, he describes the fleet leaving Korea and being hit by a typhoon before it reached the Japanese coast,' said Professor Daniele Petrella of the University of Naples, the leader of the archaeology team.

'But that happened in 1281 – is it really possible that a supposed eye witness could confuse events which were seven years apart?'

He said that Polo’s description of the Mongol fleet did not square with  the remains of ships that the team had excavated in Japan, as he had written of ships with five masts, while those which had been found had only three.

'It was during our dig that doubts began to emerge about much of what he wrote,' said Prof. Petrella.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024221/Marco-Polo-reached-China-picked-tales-Orient-Italians-claim.html

Magnetite 3D Colloidal Crystals Formed in the Early Solar System 4.6 Billion Years Ago

The Tagish Lake meteorite, which fell to Earth in Canada in 2000, contains unusual opal-like crystals.

"First, a certain amount of solution water must have been present in the meteorite to disperse the colloidal particles,” the report explains. “The solution water must have been confined in small voids, in which colloidal crystallization takes place. These conditions, along with evidence from similar meteorites, suggest that the crystals may have formed 4.6 billion years ago."

"We believe that, if synthesized, magnetite colloidal crystals have promising potential as a novel functional material,” the article notes."

Source: http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/ja2005708 and http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&node_id=223&content_id=CNBP_027957&use_sec=true&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=8730441f-f665-4dd4-805a-64b26f75a0ca

First observational test of the ‘multiverse’

"Many modern theories of fundamental physics predict that our universe is contained inside a bubble. In addition to our bubble, this `multiverse’ will contain others, each of which can be thought of as containing a universe. In the other ‘pocket universes’ the fundamental constants, and even the basic laws of nature, might be different.


Until now, nobody had been able to find a way to efficiently search for signs of bubble universe collisions – and therefore proof of the multiverse – in the CMB radiation, as the disc-like patterns in the radiation could be located anywhere in the sky. Additionally, physicists needed to be able to test whether any patterns they detected were the result of collisions or just random patterns in the noisy data."

Source: http://physicsinventions.com/?p=2735

EnviroMission plans massive solar tower for Arizona

"An ambitious solar energy project on a massive scale is about to get underway in the Arizona desert. EnviroMission is undergoing land acquisition and site-specific engineering to build its first full-scale solar tower - and when we say full-scale, we mean it! The mammoth 800-plus meter (2625 ft) tall tower will instantly become one of the world's tallest buildings. Its 200-megawatt power generation capacity will reliably feed the grid with enough power for 150,000 US homes, and once it's built, it can be expected to more or less sit there producing clean, renewable power with virtually no maintenance until it's more than 80 years old. "

Source: http://www.gizmag.com/enviromission-solar-tower-arizona-clean-energy-renewable/19287/

Could the Big Bang have been a quick conversion of antimatter into matter?

"Dragan Slavkov Hajdukovic, a physicist on leave from Cetinje, Montenegro, currently working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, emphasizes that he has no idea if this scenario occurred 13.7 billion years ago or not. But in a recent study published in Astrophysics and Space Science, he has described a mechanism that can convert matter into antimatter (or vice versa) that results in a cyclic universe that is successively dominated by matter and antimatter. In this scenario, when a matter-dominated universe collapses, an antimatter-dominated universe emerges, and the cycle continues indefinitely."

"...my work is an attempt to understand astrophysical and cosmological phenomena in the framework of the established physics, without invoking unknown forms of matter-energy and unknown mechanisms for inflation and matter-antimatter asymmetry."

"My answer may be wrong, but if it is correct it would radically change theoretical physics, astrophysics and cosmology.”

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-big-quick-conversion-antimatter.html

Parents Use Facebook to Spy on Kids

"Eleven percent of parents polled set up their Facebook accounts purely to “snoop” on Jim and Jane, 15-percent have tried to Friend their children (Thanks Mom), with 4-percent of those requests being rejected. Not surprisingly, 13-percent have resorted to logging onto friends accounts in order to check up on their children."


"“For the love of god–don’t let parents join Facebook” group, and there are hundreds of other pages dedicated to grumbling about the subject. www.myparentsjoinedfacebook.com, is a website set up purely to collect embarrassing parent/child Facebook moments and share them with the world."

Source: http://blog.laptopmag.com/more-than-half-of-parents-use-facebook-to-spy-on-kids

Some of the human X chromosome originates from Neanderthals

The ancestors of early modern humans left Africa about 80,000 to 50,000 years ago, according to DiscoveryNews.com. Despite that wide spread in time, genetic material from Neanderthals still can be found in a piece of DNA (called a haplotype) in the human X chromosome -- meaning the two clearly mated. 

"This confirms recent findings suggesting that the two populations interbred," says Dr. Labuda. His team places the timing of such intimate contacts and family ties early on, probably at the crossroads of the Middle East.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/07/18/may-be-part-neanderthal-scientists-say/#ixzz1SYd4n4qW

Linux-based system tries to tame San Francisco traffic

"McCain says it will supply San Francisco with a new Linux-based traffic controller computer that meets the latest Advanced Transportation Controller (ATC) standards. Built around a Freescale PowerQUICC II Pro processor, the "2070LXN2 NEMA" offers several keypads, an 8x40 display, plus Ethernet, USB, serial, and SDLC connections, says the company.

McCain collaborated with Fourth Dimension Traffic to win the San Francisco bid. The company ported Fourth Dimension's "D4" traffic signal software package to McCain's controller in a process that took less than three months, says the company.
The combined solution enabled the City of San Francisco to migrate its existing "2070" traffic software to an ATC platform, thereby reducing costs, says McCain (see farther below for background)."


Source: http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/McCain-2070LXN2-NEMA-controller-/

Natural Bridge on the Moon

 "Natural bridges on the Earth are typically the result of wind and water erosion - not a likely scenario on the Moon. So how did this natural bridge form? The most likely answer is dual collapse into a lava tube. From the Apollo era, SELENE, and LROC images, we know that lava tubes did form in the Moon's ancient past."

Source: http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/index.php?/archives/277-Natural-Bridge-on-the-Moon!.html

Cameron Diaz: 'I love Alex Rodriguez too much'

Diaz recalled: "We were watching the game, and I was eating, and I was getting down to, like, the last couple pieces of popcorn. And all of a sudden, I see [Alex's] hand coming in.

"Anybody who knows me does not put their hand in my food, especially when it's close to my mouth. I said, 'What are you...?' And then I went, 'You know what? I love you too much, I'm going to give it to you. You deserve it.'"


Source: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/showbiz/news/a326141/cameron-diaz-i-love-alex-rodriguez-too-much.html

Giant Globe Made of 10,000 Live-Updating OLED Panels

 "“Geo-Cosmos” is made up of 10,362 OLED panels that display continuously-updating satellite footage of our tiny blue marble, representing what our planet looks like from space in something close to realtime. It replaces an earlier model covered in LED panels, offering museum-goers a full 10 million pixels, a resolution 10 times greater than its predecessor."
 
Source: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-06/worlds-largest-spherical-oled-display-10000-panel-globe-updated-satellite-pics

100,000 times hotter than the centre of the Sun

"Professor Geoffrey Taylor, from the University of Melbourne and part of the scientific team involved with the Large Hadron Collider's Atlas Detector, describes the work as an amazing achievement.

"This state of matter doesn't exist anywhere naturally on Earth and is thought to only now occur during the collision of two neutron stars," he said.

"This will help our understanding of the dynamics of the astrophysical processes taking place as a star collapses.

"Looking at how particle jets and subatomic particles like W and Z bosons are created in heavy lead ion collisions compared to lighter hydrogen proton collisions gives us an insight into the conditions that existed in a quark gluon plasma when the universe was just milliseconds old."

Professor Taylor says the results were accomplished in just two weeks of atom smashing.

"These collisions are also generating antimatter, which will help us try to understand why we live in a stable universe of matter when equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created in the big bang," he said.

"It takes our understanding of things that are happening in the cosmos one step further."

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/14/3243341.htm

Images capture moment brain goes unconscious

"Our jaws just hit the ground," said Professor Brian Pollard from Manchester Royal Infirmary on seeing the images for the first time.
"I can't tell you the words we used as it wouldn't be polite over the phone."

"Professor Pollard explained that the brain's structures should not change over a minute-long scan, and so any differences that he and his team see as the patient falls asleep must therefore be due to changes in their brain's activity.
It is hoped that this technique could be used to learn about the nature of consciousness, but it is also likely to help doctors make headway in monitoring the health of a person's grey matter after they have suffered a head injury or stroke."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13751783

Mystery of Egyptian Pyramid's Secret Hieroglyphics Solved

Strange hieroglyphs written in red paint and sealed within the structure for 4,500 years.


"The markings are hieratic numerical signs. They read from right to left, meaning 100, 20, 1. The builders simply recorded the total length of the shaft: 121 cubits," said  Luca Miatello, an independent researcher who specializes on ancient Egyptian mathematics.

 "If the figures are numbers and they are the precise measurement of the shaft, then it's amazing," he said. "It would be a huge, rare clue to what the architect was thinking. For example, why take the trouble to precisely measure and record the length if the shaft was only used for a mundane purpose or simply abandoned?”

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/08/mystery-egyptian-pyramids-secret-hieroglyphics-solved/

IPv6 day is more than just larger internet addresses, says Verisign

"Today is the day that the internet community has to stop running away from IPv6, with some of the largest websites and content distribution networks switching over to IPv6 for 24 hours."

"Danny McPherson, chief security officer at Verisign told The INQUIRER, "In general, the community is much more aware of the issue of IPv4 exhaustion and the implications on IPv6 preparedness. As the RIRs begin to exhaust their remaining IPv4 allocations, in very short order the pain will become much more evident." In many ways IANA announcing the allocation of the final IPv4 blocks was a watershed moment for IPv6 deployment, making companies realise that the need to migrate to IPv6 is far closer than it has ever been before.

Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2076934/ipv6-day-larger-internet-addresses-verisign

Anthony Weiner: I will work hard to win back their trust and try to persuade them

"It was a very hurtful thing to do," he said. "If you're looking for some kind of deep explanation for this, I simply don't have one."

"It was a dumb thing to do to tell lies about it, because it just led to more lies,"

"I will work hard to win back their trust and try to persuade them," he said. "I have worked very hard for my constituents … Nothing about this should reflect on my official duties or on my oath of office … I certainly used bad judgment here."



Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-06-06-anthony-weiner-photo_n.htm

DNA computer 'calculates square roots'

"Those circuits were smaller [than those of the current work], but more importantly, they were built using more complex DNA molecules that made systems more difficult to debug and had other problems," Professor Winfree told BBC News.

"We are no longer pursuing the goal targeted by Len Adleman's original DNA computing experiment: to compete with silicon by using the massive parallelism of chemistry to solve combinatorial problems in mathematics," he explained


"Instead, our goal is now - and has been for many years - to enrich chemistry itself so that molecular behaviours can be programmed.

"We'd like to make chemical systems that can probe their molecular environments, process chemical signals, make decisions, and take actions at the chemical level."


Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13626583

Jose Mourinho: I'm nobody

I don't make those decisions. If the club want to do something, I'm nobody. We all agree on Higuain and Benzema: we want to keep them."
"I have no more power than I had before. 'Madrid are looking for a new model within the organisation. Having a good structure [at the club] is not a guarantee of success, but a bad structure that is not suited to the modern game - that is a guarantee of failure. We must modernise and aim for perfection.
''I will still only be a coach and nothing more. With Valdano, there was nothing personal. I wish him all the best."


Source: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story/_/id/925510/jose-mourinho-rules-out-gonzalo-higuain-and-karim-benzema-sales?cc=5739

Mladic tells judges was defending people, country

"Mladic's arraignment was his first public appearance since he went into hiding nearly 16 years ago. Wearing a gray suit, tie and cap, he stood looking bullish between two guards, who each held one of his arms to support him, as the hearing started. He took off the cap when he sat down to reveal a nearly bald head.
He spoke slowly — his stare as steely as during the war when he was the strutting leader of the Bosnian Serb army — and appeared to understand the proceedings clearly."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110603/ap_on_re_eu/eu_war_crimes_mladic

Favicon games in 16x16px - Big fun in small space

"Like Defender of the favicon, the games are rendered using a 16×16 pixels canvas and each frame is exported as a 32bits PNG image and the link tag of the favicon is replaced. Unfortunately only Opera and Firefox have the subtle combination of capabilities that make this feat possible."

ping pong: http://www.p01.org/releases/Favicon_games_and_Smart_fortwo/Pong/

fav race: http://www.p01.org/releases/Favicon_games_and_Smart_fortwo/FavRace/


Source: http://www.p01.org/releases/Favicon_games_and_Smart_fortwo/

Endeavour lands safely after final mission

"CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The Endeavour astronauts are basking in the glow of mission success Wednesday morning after winding up a spectacular flight with the 25th and final landing of the orbiter NASA built to replace Challenger."

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2011-06-01-endeavour-landing-atlantis_n.htm

Killer bacteria claims 16th victim in Europe

"E. coli is found in large quantities in the digestive systems of humans, cows and other mammals. It has been responsible for a large number of food contamination outbreaks in a wide variety of countries. In most cases, it causes non-lethal stomach ailments.
But enterohaemorrhagic E.coli, or EHEC, causes more severe symptoms, ranging from bloody diarrhea to the rare hemolytic uremic syndrome. In Germany, at least 373 people have come down with the syndrome, or HUS, in which E. coli infection attacks the kidneys, sometimes causing seizures, strokes and comas."

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43222918/ns/health-food_safety/

Hungarians are schocked about this. Media said one day: It was a spanish pepino but there is no commercial in Hungary, next day: probably Hungary bought some of these pepino. third day: it wasn't pepino...

ElcomSoft Breaks iPhone Encryption

"Explaining what we did to break this encryption is not exactly easy. In a word, we found a way to decrypt bit-to-bit images of iOS 4 devices. Decrypted images are perfectly usable, and can be analyzed with forensic tools such as Guidance EnCase or AccessData FTK (or any other tool which supports raw drive images and HFS+ file system). Decryption is not possible without having access to the actual device because we need to obtain the encryption keys that are stored in (or computed by) the device and are not dumped or stored during typical physical acquisition."

"All Apple devices starting with iPhone 3GS and running iOS 4 are affected, including iPhone, iPod and iPad devices."

Source: http://blog.crackpassword.com/2011/05/elcomsoft-breaks-iphone-encryption-offers-forensic-access-to-file-system-dumps/

Hungarian Viktor Kassai to referee Champions League final

"The Uefa Referees Committee today announced the referee for the 2010-11 Uefa Champions League final between FC Barcelona and Manchester United FC, to be played at Wembley Stadium on Saturday May 28 and kicking off at 20.45 CET.

"The match will be handled by 35-year-old Hungarian referee Viktor Kassai who made his international debut in 2001. He has officiated more than 60 Uefa matches in his refereeing career."

Source: http://www.goal.com/en/news/1716/champions-league/2011/05/26/2504155/breaking-news-hungarian-viktor-kassai-to-referee-champions

Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red satellite images

"Indiana Jones is old school, we've moved on from Indy, sorry Harrison Ford."

said Dr Sarah Parcak.

"We were very intensely doing this research for over a year. I could see the data as it was emerging, but for me the "Aha!" moment was when I could step back and look at everything that we'd found and I couldn't believe we could locate so many sites all over Egypt. To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13522957

Harold Camping: The world will end quickly on October 21

"The world will end quickly on October 21 without any build up,"
"Every delay means that more will be brought to salvation,"

"If people want me to apologize, I will apologize,"
"I did not have all that worked out as accurately as I should have had it,"
"that doesn't bother me at all"

Source: http://newyork.ibtimes.com/articles/150689/20110523/doomsday-may-21-harold-camping-new-judgment-october-21.htm

Mark Zuckerberg: Kids under 13 should be allowed on Facebook

"Education is clearly the biggest thing that will drive how the economy improves over the long term."
"We spend a lot of time talking about this."
"In the future, software and technology will enable people to learn a lot from their fellow students."
"That will be a fight we take on at some point,"
"My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age."
"Because of the restrictions we haven't even begun this learning process."
"If they're lifted then we'd start to learn what works. We'd take a lot of precautions to make sure that they are safe."


source: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/05/20/zuckerberg-kids-under-13-should-be-allowed-on-facebook/

Larry Hagman: 'Everybody has got a jerk like JR in the family'

"Romania put on Dallas to try to show how corrupt the American system was and it ended up with them lining up Ceausescu, who was the dictator, and shooting him 500 times."

‘They wanted all that stuff they didn’t even know was out there. Ceausescu let that show in to show how decadent we were and they said, “Yeah we want some of it”.’

"Everybody has got a jerk like JR in the family" said Larry Hagman.


source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1388977/JR-Ewing-says-Dallas-helped-overthrow-Ceausescu.html

Stephen Hawking: "philosophy is dead"

“Most of us don't worry about these questions most of the time. But almost all of us must sometimes wonder: Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.”

“Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.”

said Stephen Hawking at Google’s Zeitgeist Conference in Hertfordshire

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8520033/Stephen-Hawking-tells-Google-philosophy-is-dead.html

Microsoft will continue

"Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms." 

Said Microsoft about Skype acquisition

Source: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/05/microsoft-will-invest-and-support-skype-on-linux/