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Submission + - PETA asks Illinois to build roadside memorials for (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: It was a gruesome accident May 22: A truck driver lost control and his rig carrying 36 cows partially tipped over on an overpass along Interstate Highway 80 near Hazel Crest, sending some of the animals plunging about 25 feet onto Interstate Highway 294.

The death toll totaled 16 head of cattle, including one badly injured animal that police shot to end its suffering.

An animal-rights group now wants the Illinois Department of Transportation to erect an official roadside memorial sign. It would serve as a tribute to the victims, according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which also seeks installation of a second memorial to six cows killed in traffic after they were thrown from a truck that overturned on Oct. 14 near Cambridge, Ill.

"Cows are intelligent, sensitive animals that feel pain the same way we do," said Tracy Patton, a campaigner for PETA.

The markers would be the first official highway memorials in the U.S. dedicated to animals killed in traffic accidents. Two previous applications submitted in Virginia, to honor almost 200 pigs killed in traffic wrecks, were turned down.

"These proposed signs would also remind tractor-trailer drivers of their responsibility to the thousands of animals they haul to their deaths every day," said Patton, 26, who lives in Arlington Heights. "It's a big enough tragedy that these animals end up in slaughterhouses, where they are kicked, shocked with electric prods and finally dragged off the trucks to their deaths. Sparing them from being tossed from a speeding truck and deprived of care afterward, sometimes for several hours, seems the least that we can do."

A state law passed in 2007 allows the family members of victims killed in drunken-driving accidents to request that IDOT install memorial signs along Illinois highways. It's called "Tina's Law" to honor Tina Ball, a road construction worker and mother of seven who was killed by a drunk driver while she was working on Interstate Highway 57 on Sept. 15, 2003.

Seven applications have been submitted, and five signs installed so far, officials said.

The law was amended this year to allow memorials for any highway fatality, not just DUIs.

"The law was expanded this year partly to discourage the practice of unofficial roadway memorials, such as crosses, stuffed animals and flowers, all of which can be a distraction to drivers," IDOT spokesman Guy Tridgell said.

IDOT removes unofficial memorials placed along state routes. It's up to local jurisdictions whether to take down unofficial memorials outside the state-designated right of way, officials said.

The official IDOT memorial markers are 36-by-24-inch blue signs with white lettering. People requesting a sign are required to pay a fee.

The state law governing the memorial markers says that the signs can be requested only by a "qualified relative of a deceased victim."

.

In her applications, Patton asked IDOT to waive the "qualified relative" requirement, citing in an accompanying letter to the state's roadside memorial coordinator the absence of "surviving family members for animals in the meat trade." She applied as a "concerned Illinois resident in lieu of living relatives."

Patton said PETA is awaiting a response to its application from IDOT.

But Tridgell told your "Getting Around" reporter that, while this marked the first request for an official roadway memorial on behalf of animals, the law is clear, and the application will be denied.
Government

Submission + - Feds investigating Illinois ''pump failure' as pos (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: Federal officials confirmed they are investigating Friday whether a cyber attack may have been responsible for the failure of a water pump at a public water district in Illinois last week. But they cautioned that no conclusions had been reached, and they disputed one cyber security expert's statements that other utilities are vulnerable to a similar attack.

Joe Weiss, a noted cyber security expert, disclosed the possible cyber attack on his blog Thursday. Weiss said he had obtained a state government report, dated Nov. 10 and titled "Public Water District Cyber Intrusion," which gave details of the alleged cyber attack culminating in the "burn out of a water pump."
Weiss declined to identify the state — or the region — where the water utility was located, saying the report was marked "For Official Use Only."

But in its statement, the DHS said the water system was located in Springfield.

Such an attack would be noteworthy because, while cyber attacks on businesses are commonplace, attacks that penetrate industrial control systems and intentionally destroy equipment are virtually unknown in the United States.

According to Weiss, the report says water district workers noted "glitches" in the systems for about two months. On Nov. 8, a water district employee noticed problems with the industrial control systems, and a computer repair company checked logs and determined that the computer had been hacked.

Weiss said the report says the cyber attacker hacked into the water utility using passwords stolen from a control system vendor and that he had stolen other user names and passwords. Weiss said the Department of Homeland Security has an obligation to inform industry about the "water pump" attack so they can protect themselves from similar assaults.

But a DHS spokesman said the cause of the water pump failure is unknown. The DHS and FBI are "gathering facts," DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard said in a statement. "At this time there is no credible corroborated data that indicates a risk to critical infrastructure entities or a threat to public safety," he said.

If DHS identifies any useful information about possible impacts to additional entities, it will disseminate it as it becomes available, Boogaard said.

And another computer expert familiar with the incident said the government was acting properly.

"This is just one of many events that occur almost on a weekly basis," said Sean McGurk, former director of the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center. "While it may be nice to speculate that it was caused by a nation-state or actor, it may be the unintended consequence of maintenance," he said.

DHS does not have the luxury of jumping to conclusions, McGurk said. "The department has to ensure that they're sharing information in a way that's valuable to the community," he said.

McGurk also said the state report may be in error, especially if the writer was not a water or control systems engineer. "We see that all the time — initial reports that turn out to be wrong," he said.

Weiss, a frequent critic of DHS, said he was revealing details of the state document because he believes other utilities should be aware of the incident so they could take precautions. DHS should have distributed information about the attack through several entities set up to share information, as well as to private industry groups, he said.

Submission + - Batteries again exploding in airline luggage (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: A United Airlines employee sustained minor injures after a battery shipped in a bag exploded at O'Hare International Airport, officials said.

The employee was taken to Resurrection Medical Center in fair-to-serious condition but officials said the employee sustained, "minor injuries", according to a Chicago Fire Department spokesman.

The explosion occurred as the employee was moving the bag and it burst open, hurting the man's arm, fire officials said.

Officials believe the incident was accidental and no criminal activity is suspected, officials said.

A United Airlines spokeswoman said while flights are not being affected passengers may experience delays retrieving their bags.

Transportation Security Administration officials said the item was checked in the C concourse of the airport. Police and FBI officials are on the scene and are investigating.

The owner of the bag is being interview by law enforcement officials. Officials said the bag was orginally checked in Houston, Texas and had a final destination at O'Hare.
Science

Submission + - US's most powerful H-Bomb being dismantled (yahoo.com)

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: AMARILLO, Texas (AP) — The last of the nation's most powerful nuclear bombs — a weapon hundreds of times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — is being disassembled nearly half a century after it was put into service at the height of the Cold War.
The final components of the B53 bomb will be broken down Tuesday at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, the nation's only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility. The completion of the dismantling program is a year ahead of schedule, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, and aligns with President Barack Obama's goal of reducing the number of nuclear weapons.
Thomas D'Agostino, the nuclear administration's chief, called the bomb's elimination a "significant milestone."
First put into service in 1962, when Cold War tensions peaked during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the B53 weighed 10,000 pounds and was the size of a minivan. According to the American Federation of Scientists, it was 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II.
The B53 was designed to destroy facilities deep underground, and it was carried by B-52 bombers.
Since it was made using older technology by engineers who have since retired or died, developing a disassembly process took time. Engineers had to develop complex tools and new procedures to ensure safety.
"We knew going in that this was going to be a challenging project, and we put together an outstanding team with all of our partners to develop a way to achieve this objective safely and efficiently," said John Woolery, the plant's general manager.
Many of the B53s were disassembled in the 1980s, but a significant number remained in the U.S. arsenal until they were retired from the stockpile in 1997. Pantex spokesman Greg Cunningham said he couldn't comment on how many of the bombs have been disassembled at the Texas plant.
The weapon is considered dismantled when the roughly 300 pounds of high explosives inside are separated from the special nuclear material, known as the pit. The uranium pits from bombs dismantled at Pantex will be stored on an interim basis at the plant, Cunningham said.
The material and components are then processed, which includes sanitizing, recycling and disposal, the National Nuclear Security Administration said last fall when it announced the Texas plant's role in the B53 dismantling.
The plant will play a large role in similar projects as older weapons are retired from the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal.
Medicine

Submission + - 'Wi-fi refugees' shelter in West Virginia (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: Dozens of Americans who claim to have been made ill by wi-fi and mobile phones have flocked to the town of Green Bank, West Virginia
There are five billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide and advances in wireless technology make it increasingly difficult to escape the influence of mobile devices. But while most Americans seem to embrace continuous connectivity, some believe it's making them physically ill.

Diane Schou is unable to hold back the tears as she describes how she once lived in a shielded cage to protect her from the electromagnetic radiation caused by waves from wireless communication.

"It's a horrible thing to have to be a prisoner," she says. "You become a technological leper because you can't be around people.

"It's not that you would be contagious to them — it's what they're carrying that is harmful to you."

Ms Schou is one of an estimated 5% of Americans who believe they suffer from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS), which they say is caused by exposure to electromagnetic fields typically created by mobile phones, wi-fi and other electronic equipment.

Hiding in a cage
Symptoms range from acute headaches, skin burning, muscle twitching and chronic pain.

Diane Schou says she was forced to live in a shielded cage in Iowa, prior to moving to West Virginia
"My face turns red, I get a headache, my vision changes, and it hurts to think. Last time [I was exposed] I started getting chest pains — and to me that's becoming life-threatening," Ms Schou says.

To alleviate the pain, her husband built an insulated living space known as a Faraday Cage.

He covered a wooden frame with two layers of wire mesh and a door that could be sealed shut to prevent radio waves from entering.

Diane spent much of her time inside it, sleeping on a twin mattress on a plywood base.

"At least I could see my husband on the outside, I could talk to him," she says.

Diane believes her illness was triggered by emissions from a mobile phone mast.

Her symptoms were so severe that she abandoned her family farm in the state of Iowa and moved to Green Bank, West Virginia — a tiny village of 143 residents in the heart of the Allegheny Mountains.

Outlawed wireless technology
Green Bank is part of the US Radio Quiet Zone, where wireless is banned across 13,000 sq miles (33,000 sq km) to prevent transmissions interfering with a number of radio telescopes in the area.

The largest is owned by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and enables scientists to listen to low-level signals from different places in the universe.

Others are operated by the US military and are a critical part of the government's spy network.

As a result of the radio blackout, the Quiet Zone has become a haven for people like Diane, desperate to get away from wireless technology.

The world's largest, fully steerable radio telescope is operated in the town of Green Bank
"Living here allows me to be more of a normal person. I can be outdoors. I don't have to stay hidden in a Faraday Cage," she says.

"I can see the sunrise, I can see the stars at night, and I can be in the rain.

"Here in Green Bank allows me to be with people. People here do not carry cell phones so I can socialise.

"I can go to church, I can attend some celebrations, I can be with people. I couldn't do that when I had to remain in the Faraday Cage."

But EHS is not medically recognised in the US.

Debated 'condition'
The wireless association, CTIA, says that scientific evidence overwhelmingly shows that wireless devices, with the limits established by government regulators, do not pose a public health risk or cause any adverse health effects.

And the World Health Organization, while acknowledging that the symptoms are genuine and can be severe, says: "EHS has no clear diagnostic criteria and there is no scientific basis to link EHS symptoms to EMF (electromagnetic field) exposure. Further, EHS is not a medical diagnosis, nor is it clear that it represents a single medical problem."

However, new research by scientists at Louisiana State University and published by the International Journal of Neuroscience, claims to show that EHS can be caused by low frequency electromagnetic fields found in the environment.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

Towards the end of my normal life when I still could watch television I could actually cut my pain off and on with the remote control device”

Nichols Fox
West Virginia resident
"The study provides direct evidence that linking human symptoms with environmental factors, in this case EMF," says Dr Andrew Marino, a neurology professor who led the study.

"It's a watershed in that regard. There have been no previous studies that scientifically assess whether electromagnetic fields in the environment could produce human symptoms.

"And the symptoms matter because they are the first steps that show how EMFs produce human disease."

Scientists conducted a number of tests on a 35-year-old physician who had diagnosed herself with EHS.

She was seated on a wooden chair while voltage was applied to metal plates for pulses of 90 seconds to create a series of magnetic fields. The woman was asked to describe her symptoms after each exposure and after random sham exposures when, unknown to her, there was no voltage.

She reported headaches, pain and muscle twitching during the genuine exposures and no symptoms for the majority of the sham exposures.

The scientists concluded that such consistency could not be attributed to chance.

But other experts still disagree that a link exists.

Technological 'ignorance'
Bob Park is a physics professor at the University of Maryland.

He says that the radiation emitted by wi-fi is simply too weak to cause the type of changes in the body's chemistry that could make people sick.

Nichols Fox lives alone in a home powered primarily by gas just outside the Quiet Zone
"The bigger problem that we face is that in our society, driven by technological change, people have very little education," he says.

"There are lots of things people need to learn and they're not learning it. The thing that's going to kill them is ignorance."

Seventy-year-old Nichols Fox says she understands such scepticism — it took several years before she became convinced that her debilitating pain and fatigue were caused by electromagnetic radiation emitted by her computer.

"Towards the end of my normal life when I still could watch television I could actually cut my pain off and on with the remote control device," she says. "It was such an enormously clear association there was just no denying it."

Her symptoms are so severe that she has isolated herself almost entirely, living in a remote house surrounded by fields and woods just outside the Quiet Zone. She says even the low-level electromagnetic fields generated there affect her health.

She uses hardly any electricity — her refrigerator operates on gas, light comes from kerosene lamps and a wood-burning stove provides most of her heat.

A thermostat is set to switch on electric heaters if the temperature drops to a level where she is in danger of hypothermia.

"It's so important that people understand that this is a very serious disability, it's a life-changing disability. It leads to an earlier death — I have absolutely no doubt about that and I think it's just unfortunate that this is not recognised," she says.

But even in this secluded part of America, the incursion of wireless technology is relentless. Planning permission has been granted for a cell tower a few miles from her home, and Nichols says she'll have to move.

"I'm getting older and I really don't know where I'm going to go or what I'm going to do," she says. "It's really quite frightening."
Space

Submission + - Bizarre "Diamond Planet" Discovered (discovery.com) 1

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "It was once the core of a star, but now has the mass of a planet. It is composed of dense carbon with a crystal-like structure. Yes, it's a bona fide planet made from diamond.

The object, called J1719-1438, circles a pulsing companion star (pulsar) about 4,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Serpens (The Snake), which lies about one-eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way."
Science

Submission + - Diamond planet found in Milky Way (theconversation.edu.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A planet has been found in our Milky Way galaxy that may be made entirely of diamond.

As reported in Science today, an international astronomy team led by Swinburne University’s Matthew Bailes, has discovered a low-mass but dense object in orbit around a rapidly-rotating neutron star.

This binary system (the name given to any two objects in space orbiting a common center of mass) exists some 4,000 lightyears away in the constellation of Serpens (the Snake).
Science

Submission + - Black Hole Caught in Act of Swallowing Star (space.com)

Submitted by
thomst
thomst writes: "Charles Choi of Space.com reports on an article in the August 24 Nature (abstract and editor's summary here, full article behind Nature's paywall) on data from the Swift satellite telescope that allowed astrophysicists David Burrows and Davide Lazzati to observe a supermassive black hole emit a relativistic jet of energy (moving at 99.5% of lightspeed) characteristic of a star (which has been dubbed Swift J1644+57) being torn apart as it falls into the black hole's accretion disk. The most interesting thing about this event (which was also observed by radio telescopes around the world) is that it was captured from the very beginning of the process of emitting the jet which signaled Swift J1644+57's demise. A different group of astrophysicists, led by Ashley Zauderer, submitted a letter about their own study of the event, which was published in the same edition of Nature."

Submission + - Woman who recorded cops acquitted of eavesdropping (chicagotribune.com) 1

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: Frustrated, Tiawanda Moore quietly flipped on the recorder on her BlackBerry as she believed that two Chicago police internal affairs investigators were trying to talk her into dropping her sexual harassment complaint against a patrol officer.

But Moore was the one who ended up in trouble — criminally charged with violating an obscure state eavesdropping law that makes audio recording of police officers without their consent a felony offense.

On Wednesday, though, a Criminal Court jury quickly repudiated the prosecution's case, taking less than an hour to acquit Moore on both eavesdropping counts.

The case offered a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes work of Chicago police's internal affairs division, which investigates complaints by the public of wrongdoing by rank-and-file officers. And it turned out to be an unflattering look.

The surreptitious recording made by Moore proved crucial for the jury, which heard the four-minute snippet during the trial and replayed it during the deliberations.

"The two cops came across as intimidating and insensitive," said one juror, Ray Adams, 57, a pharmacist from the western suburbs. "Everybody thought it was just a waste of time and that (Moore) never should have been charged."

The case against Moore as well as pending charges against a Chicago artist have drawn the attention of civil libertarians who argue that the state's eavesdropping law is unconstitutional.

Illinois is one of only a handful of states that make it illegal to record audio of public conversations without the permission of everyone involved. Laws in Massachusetts and Oregon are similarly strict but not as broad, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

If the victim is a law enforcement officer, the potential penalties increase sharply — up to 15 years in prison, the maximum sentence Moore faced if she had been convicted.

Critics contend that the statute is obsolete in a world where so many people carry cellphones with recording devices and surveillance cameras populate virtually every corner of the city. They also argue it prevents citizens from documenting misconduct by law enforcement officers in public.

"This law is wrong," said Joshua Kutnick, a lawyer who represents Christopher Drew, the artist awaiting trial in Cook County on similar eavesdropping charges. "It's antiquated, and it has no place in our society, where everybody has a recording device."

The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit in Chicago last year challenging the law, saying it was unconstitutional to prevent people from openly recording police officers working in public. A federal judge dismissed the suit, but the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear oral arguments next month in the ACLU's appeal of the decision.

"There's nothing private about a police officer doing his duties on the public way," said Harvey Grossman, legal director for the ACLU of Illinois. "The way that they police and conduct themselves is a matter of public importance."

But Pat Camden, a spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police in Chicago, said the union supports the law because it prevents people from making baseless accusations against officers by recording them and then releasing snippets that don't reveal the full context of the incident.

Moore's case centered on an exception in the Illinois statute that allows citizens to obtain evidence through a surreptitious recording if they have a "reasonable suspicion" that a crime may be committed.

Her attorney, Robert W. Johnson, argued that Moore believed that the internal affairs investigators, Sgt. Richard Plotke and Officer Luis Alejo, were dragging their feet on her complaint, which could be construed as official misconduct, a criminal charge.

"The plan was to kill this complaint from the very beginning," Johnson told jurors Wednesday in his closing argument. "They were stalling, they were intimidating her and they were bullying her into not making that complaint."

In the recording, which the one juror said was replayed several times in the jury room, Alejo was heard explaining to Moore that she might be wasting her time because it was basically her word against that of the patrol officer. Alejo also said they could "almost guarantee" that the officer would never bother her again if she dropped the complaint.

"When we heard that, everyone (on the jury) just shook their head," juror Adams said in a telephone interview. "If what those two investigators were doing wasn't criminal, we felt it bordered on criminal, and she had the right to record it."

Moore alleged that the patrol officer who answered the domestic disturbance call at her home had fondled her and given her his personal phone number.

In a statement issued after the verdict, the Cook County state's attorney's office defended bringing the charges, saying it acted "in good faith based on credible evidence."

"The defense in this case was inconsistent with the original statements that were made by the defendant and differed drastically from the statements that she had originally made to investigators," the statement said.

Shortly after she was charged, Moore went back to police headquarters with an attorney and filed her sworn affidavit of sexual harassment against the patrol officer. The complaint is "still officially an open investigation going through process of review," a police spokeswoman said Wednesday.

But the two internal affairs investigators were never investigated by the department; in fact, Plotke was promoted to lieutenant, according to testimony. Both he and Alejo took the stand at Moore's trial and denied pressuring her to back off her complaint, saying it was she who wavered and that they were simply explaining her options.

Moore, 20, who testified tearfully in her own defense, said she was "still shaking" following the verdict at how close she came to prison.

"If I would have known I was going to get in trouble, I might never have come in and filed the complaint in the first place," she said.
ISS

Submission + - Russian space freighter lost (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Sez Zero
Sez Zero writes: An unmanned freighter launched to the International Space Station (ISS) has been lost.

The Russian space agency has confirmed the Progress M-12M cargo ship was not placed in the correct orbit by its rocket and fell back to Earth.

The vessel was carrying 2.5 tonnes of supplies for the ISS astronauts.

With the retirement of the US space shuttle, there is now a critical reliance on the robotic freighters to keep the station supplied.
NASA

Submission + - New NASA moon rocket could cost $38 billion (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: Normally I am a big supporter of NASA and other government funded scientific ventures, but this recent report has me rethinking the viability of NASA. How many schools could be built for $38 billion? How many kids could be sent to college for that cost? To me it seems we might get a better return on science investment from better science education, rather than this mission. Let alone that SpaceX thinks it could do it for $3 billion...

Reporting from Washington— The rocket and capsule that NASA is proposing to return astronauts to the moon would fly just twice in the next 10 years and cost as much as $38 billion, according to internal NASA documents obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.

The money would pay for a new heavy-lift rocket and Apollo-like crew capsule that eventually could take astronauts to the moon and beyond. But it would not be enough to pay for a lunar landing or for more than one manned test flight, in 2021.

That timeline and price tag could pose serious problems for supporters of the new spacecraft, which is being built from recycled parts of the shuttle and the now-defunct Constellation moon program. In effect, it means that it would take the U.S. manned-space program more than 50 years — if ever — to duplicate its 1969 landing on the moon.

Such an outlook is certain to infuriate NASA supporters in Congress, who last year ordered the agency to build a new heavy-lift rocket by December 2016, a deadline NASA says it can't meet. And it may well convince others that there's no good reason not to slash NASA's budget as part of a recent deal to cut federal spending by at least $2.1 trillion over 10 years.

"It's easier to balance the budget by going after the big numbers rather than the little numbers," said Howard McCurdy, a space policy expert at American University in Washington. He said the new rocket might be spared if NASA keeps the program within its budget, a big if considering NASA's history of significant cost overruns.

"That's what is going to get them [NASA officials] in trouble, if they come back hat in hand asking for money," McCurdy said.

According to preliminary NASA estimates, it would cost $17 billion to $22 billion to ready the new rocket and Orion capsule for a test flight in December 2017 that would put an unmanned capsule into a lunar orbit. An additional $12 billion to $16 billion would be needed to launch the first crew on a lunar flyby in August 2021.

NASA spokesman David Weaver said nothing was yet final, however, and that the agency still was crunching numbers.

"We want to get this right and ensure we have a sustainable program so we don't repeat the mistakes of the past," Weaver said in a statement.

The agency has contracted with Booz Allen Hamilton, a Virginia consulting firm, to conduct an independent assessment. The firm's findings are expected this month, and even agency insiders expect Booz Allen Hamilton to come back with a higher price tag given NASA's history of lowballing initial cost estimates.

The high cost and 10-year schedule are being floated despite a 2010 agreement by Congress and the White House that all but requires NASA to rely on existing shuttle parts and remnants of the now-defunct Constellation moon program, which cost taxpayers $13.1 billion through April without producing a flyable rocket or capsule. The intent was to get the rocket built quickly and comparatively cheaply.

NASA has not officially announced a design, but internal NASA documents show the agency intends to replicate much of the shuttle design, retaining the shuttle's orange fuel tank and side-mounted boosters. The plane-like orbiter would be replaced by the Orion capsule, left over from the Constellation program, atop the tank.

U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) a frequent NASA critic, said the money would be better spent by investing in commercial rocket companies or converting military rockets rather than recycling equipment from NASA's scrap yard.

"This is an absolute waste of borrowed money," Rohrabacher said in a statement. He said that "for much, much less than $38 billion" NASA could invest in new technologies, such as orbiting fuel depots, that would help NASA use military or commercial rockets and "explore the solar system with our existing American launch vehicle fleet."

NASA has been working to jump-start a commercial space industry that would ferry crews and cargo to the International Space Station this decade. And though the rockets and capsules are smaller and less complex than would be required to go to the moon, initial cost estimates for commercial spaceflight appear much lower than NASA's numbers.

Last week, Boeing announced that it intended to build its own capsule to fly aboard an existing rocket, the Atlas V, which it said could be ready to fly crews to the space station by 2015.

John Elbon, manager of Boeing's commercial crew program, said the company could meet the milestone if it received some of the $850 million per year that President Obama has requested for the next five years for commercial spaceflight.

Another contender is Hawthorne-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp, or SpaceX, which last year designed, built and flew its Dragon capsule into orbit and safely returned it to Earth for less than $1 billion. Founder Elon Musk has told friends that he thinks SpaceX could build a rocket able to fly to the moon for about $3 billion.
Power

Submission + - Schooling fish hold promise for wind power (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: Schools of fish have shown engineers how to squeeze much more power from wind farms.

A new wind farm design mimics a school of fish to exploit wind turbulence, and could dramatically improve power output.

Familiar propeller-style wind turbines with large sweeping blades have almost reached their limit of efficiency.

But in a wind farm, they must be spaced widely apart to avoid turbulence from the other turbines.

This has limited wind farm power output to around two watts per square metre of land at favourable sites.

But redesigned wind farms could perhaps get up to 10 times more power from the same land.

A test array in the California desert takes a whole new approach to the problem, according to a study published in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy.

This new study uses "vertical axis" wind turbines that resemble upright, spinning egg whisks. Although they are less efficient individually than the propeller-style turbines, they are able to use turbulent winds from many directions.
Books

Submission + - Frustrated judge pushes Google digital book deal (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by SpuriousLogic
SpuriousLogic writes: A Manhattan federal judge set a Sept. 15 deadline for Google, authors and publishers to come up with a legal plan to create the world's largest digital library, expressing frustration that the six-year-old dispute has not been resolved.

At a hearing on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said if the dispute is not "resolved or close to resolved in principle" by mid-September, he will set a "relatively tight schedule" for the parties to prepare for a possible trial.

"I'm a little bit concerned. This is a six-year-old case," Chin said. "One thought is to put you on a schedule, give you a deadline."

Citing antitrust and copyright concerns, Chin had on March 22 rejected a $125 million settlement. He said it went "too far" in allowing Google to exploit digitized copyrighted works by selling subscriptions to them online and engaging in "wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission."

Google, which runs the world's largest Internet search engine, had scanned about 12 million books, saying it would ease access to materials for readers and researchers.

After Tuesday's hearing, Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker said the company is exploring "a number of options" to address Chin's concerns. Google made a similar statement after Chin's last hearing in the case on June 1.

OPT-IN STRUCTURE SOUGHT

The rejected settlement would have resolved a lawsuit by The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.

Google would have been allowed to sell online access to millions of out-of-print books. The Mountain View, California company would have created a registry of books and paid $125 million to people whose copyrighted books had been scanned and to locate authors of scanned books who had not come forward.

But Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp and various academics and authors said the agreement gave Google too much power or violated antitrust and copyright law. The Justice Department also said it appeared to violate the law.

Amazon sells the Kindle digital reader, which is not compatible with Google's library. Sony Corp, which makes an compatible e-reader, favored the agreement.

Chin has urged that a settlement include only books whose copyright owners agree to the arrangement, rather than require authors to "opt out."

Michael Boni, a lawyer representing The Authors Guild, told the judge that "we are trying to settle this case with an opt-in structure."

Chin was elevated last year to the federal appeals court in New York, but retained jurisdiction over the Google case.

The case is The Authors Guild et al v. Google Inc, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 05-08136.

Submission + - India: 'Massive' uranium find in India (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
GillBates0
GillBates0 writes: "BBC reports that India's southern state of Andhra Pradesh may have one of the largest reserves of uranium in the world. India is planning to set up about 30 reactors over as many years and get a quarter of its electricity from nuclear energy by 2050."

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