22683066
submission
tcd004 writes:
An asteroid is caught in a synchronized orbit with the Earth, dancing back and forth relative to our planet as both circle the sun, a team of Canadian scientists has discovered. The object, which for now is dubbed 2010 TK7, is a "Trojan" asteroid, meaning that it is trapped in a delicate gravitational balance between a tug from the sun and an equal tug from the Earth. It's long been known that Jupiter, Neptune and Mars have Trojans orbiting alongside them, but this is the first time one has been found alongside our planet.
22656300
submission
tcd004 writes:
Russian and French teams are currently hard at work in French Guiana on the northern coast of South America, building the first Soyuz launch facility in the Western Hemisphere. Soyuz rockets normally carry 3,500 pound payloads into orbit, but from the French Guiana spaceport, the rocket will have an added benefit of being near the equator where the Earth's spin extremely fast. This extra boost allows it to deliver a 6,600 pound payload into orbit. The first launches are scheduled for October.
20820568
submission
tcd004 writes:
A report released today by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism shows that the Drudge Report is a far more important driver of online news traffic than Facebook or Twitter. In fact, for the top 25 news websites, Twitter barely registers as a source of traffic. The report hits on several other interesting findings about news behavior.
18447974
submission
tcd004 writes:
The teen years are a critical "pruning" stage in the brain. Neural pathways that are needed are strengthened, and those that aren't are discarded. How is a twitter/facebook/texting/xbox lifestyle remaking the teen brain? DR. JAY GIEDD, a neuroscientist, National Institute of Mental Health is studying the affects of multitasking and constant communication on teens, and he thinks these influences may actually be building a better brain.
18267186
submission
tcd004 writes:
If you added the Youtube Facebook app prior to 2009, you're given YouTube free access to nearly all the data in your profile (as well as many of your friends). But if you install the same app today, it gets very limited access. Older versions of Facebook apps, it turns out, still have "grandfathered" access to data that the social networking service has restricted for new apps. If you're protective of your privacy, it might be a good idea to delete and reinstall any older apps in your profile.
18023310
submission
tcd004 writes:
Documents obtained by the PBS NewsHour reveal a concerted effort to filter and verify U.S. and international government email accounts from the Gawker database leak. The group involved implores participants to keep the operation secret, because leaking their efforts "will only jeopordize the serious lulz fest about to hit the internet in the coming months." Agencies who have been breached allegedly include NASA, the U.S. Senate, the South African Judiciary, and others.
17134986
submission
tcd004 writes:
The PBS NewsHour reports: there is water on the moon ... along with a long list of other compounds, including, mercury, gold and silver. That's according to a more detailed analysis of the cold lunar soil near the moon's South Pole. The results were released as six papers by a large team of scientists in the journal, Science Thursday. The data comes from the October 2009 mission, when NASA slammed a booster rocket traveling nearly 6,000 miles per hour into the moon and blasted out a hole. Trailing close behind it was a second spacecraft, rigged with a spectrometer to study the lunar plume released by the blast. The mission is called LCROSS, for Lunar Crater Observer and Sensing Satellite.
16660992
submission
tcd004 writes:
Dozens of letters written by Nobel prize winner Frances Crick have just been released. The letters, which even Crick thought had been destoryed, reveal the intense, and sometimes playful competition among researchers to decode DNA in the 1960's. At one point, Watson and Crick were pulled off of DNA research because they incorporated works from a competing team at Kings College. Crick's letter to his rival (and friend) Maurice Wilkins read "Cheer up and take it from us that even if we kicked you in the pants it was between friends," he wrote. "We hope our burglary will at least produce a united front in your group!"
16449438
submission
tcd004 writes:
The FDA is currently considering approval of the first mass-market, genetically modified animal, a super salmon. The engineered fish grows to full size in half the time, making it cheaper to raise and lessening it's environmental impact. But critics argue that the testing that has been done on the fish so far amounts to junk science, and there are unknown consequences if the fish escapes into the wild. Would you eat a hormone-enhanced fish?
16295682
submission
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.
15786370
submission
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.
15291020
submission
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?
15289188
submission
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.
15241806
submission
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
