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-/