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Submission + - The 110MPG X-prize Car Was Built In Rural Virginia (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Instead of using Detroit engineers or Silicon Valley bitheads, Virginia-based Edison2 relied on retired Formula 1 and Nascar engineers to build its entry for the X-prize. Relying on composite materials and titanium, the team assembled an ultra-lightweight car that provides all the comforts of a standard 4-passenger vehicle, but gets more than 100 mpg. The custom engineering goes all the way down to the car's lug nuts, which weigh less than 11 grams each. Amazingly, they expect a production version of the car should cost less than $20,000.
Be

Submission + - 500K Text Messages Reveal Nation's Mood on 9/11 (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: The PBS NewsHour reports that German researchers analyzed 500,000 text messages sent on Sept. 11, 2001, and created an hour-by-hour psychological profile Americans on that day. The pager text messages, which were posted to Wikileaks in 2009, were analyzed for words that correlated to sadness, anxiety and anger. The results show that words related to anger dominated communications as the day wore on. The study was published in the Journal of Psychological Science.
Privacy

Submission + - Is RFID really that scary? (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Defcon participant Chris Paget demonstrated his ability to capture RFID data from people hundreds of feet away for the PBS NewsHour. Paget went through the regular laundry list of security concerns over RFID: people can be tracked, their information accessed, their identities comprimised. Not so fast, says Mark Roberti of RFID Journal. Mark challenges Paget to point to a single instance where RFID was successfully used for nefarious purposes. The signals are too weak and the data is too obscure, according to Roberti. So who is right? Has RFID yet lead to a single instance of identity theft, illegal monitoring, or other security compromise?

Submission + - China to demolish 1/2 of all residential buildings (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: The landscapes of Inception are a reality in many parts of China, where giant apartment buildings lean 30 degrees off center—the results of years of hasty, shoddy construction coupled with aging infrastructure. One set of apartments planned to be six stories tall eventually grew to 22 stories. A year-old highway bridge that developed catastrophic cracks was initially repaired with glue. But the process of rebuilding is also rife with corrupt land grabs and forced evictions.
Censorship

Submission + - From Slaying Dragons to Dictators (newsweek.com)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: In a weekend, programmer Austin Heap transformed from an apathetic MMO player, to a world class regime-slayer. When word for Iran's rigged election broke over Twitter, Heap decided to dedicate himself to building a better proxy system for people behind Iran's firewall. Heap's creation, Haystack, conceals someone’s real online destinations inside a stream of innocuous traffic. You may be browsing an opposition Web site, but to the censors it will appear you are visiting, say, weather.com. Heap tends to hide users in content that is popular in Tehran, sometimes the regime’s own government mouthpieces

Submission + - 6 spend 520 days in isolation for mock Mars trip (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: On Thursday morning, six astronauts were locked in a 550 cubic-meter windowless complex in Moscow. The mission: to simulate the experience of a real trip to Mars and back. The "voyage" will take 520 days, roughly 12 months longer than the average six-month stay at the International Space Station. Scientists will be monitoring the international crew and studying everything from social and psychological impacts of isolation to microbiology and clinical diagnostics. The crew will have to deal with food shoratages, illness, and other problems in total isolation.

Submission + - Help PBS NewsHour host the Gulf Oil Live stream 3

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Since the gulf oil crisis began, PBS NewsHour and NPR have transcoded the BP live video stream and rebroadcast it in FLV format to reach the widest possible audience. We feel strongly that we are providing a public service by streaming a reliable, consistent feed of the goings on 5,000 feet below the surface of the gulf. But our bandwidth budget is running out. We're looking for a CDN or other organization willing to donate the bandwidth to cover this story to its conclusion. Give us a hand. If you can help us out, please email us at oilleakvideo@gmail.com. Thanks!
The Internet

Submission + - Pope admonishes the Internet and Transparency (pbs.org) 2

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: At a conference on digital media at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI attacked the idea of transparency in the internet age, warning that digital transparency exacerbates tensions between nations and within nations themselves. And increases the "dangers of ... intellectual and moral relativism," which can lead to "multiple forms of degradation and humiliation" of the essence of a person, and to the "pollution of the spirit." All in all, it seemed a pretty grim view of the wide open communication parameters being demanded by the Internet age.
Politics

Submission + - Does Online Data Visualization Make Lying Easier? (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Recently, the PBS NewsHour released this map plotting members of the Tea Party throughout the United States, purportedly revealing that it is actually a small and disparate group that seems large due to outsized media coverage.

At roughly the same time, Slate.com created a map of tea party events showing expansive growth over time, and Freedom works published this Google map of hundreds of Tea Party tax day events. The three maps tell radically different stories to different audiences, all using similar data collection tools. It's no surprise that "damn lies and statistics" can tell competing tales about the same data, but are these armchair data visualization tools helping statistics to become even better liars?
Mars

Submission + - How do yo land a nuke-powered Mini-Cooper on Mars?

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Miles O'brien narrates this video simulation of NASA's next Mars shot, which promises to out-gun all previous efforts. The Mini Cooper-sized Mars Science Laboratory, which is now named Curiosity, will crawl the Martian surface under steam from a nuclear powerplant—but it's a gentile giant compared to it's predecessors. Recent theories have emerged that previous attempts at identifying organic compounds in Martian soil may have actually cooked away any signs of life-giving elements. Curiosity will go to great pains to avoid scorching the Earth...erm...Mars.
Education

Submission + - Public needs to understand Nanotech to support it (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: If the American public doesn't come to grips with simple scientific concepts, like: 'What is a nanometer?' "it could cost the American economy, because what the public doesn't understand, it might no longer support, while other countries invest in the next phase of technology" says George Whitesides of Harvard's Whitesides Research Group.

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