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An anonymous reader writes:
Scientists have been following and projecting Sandy's path with all the tools at their disposal: ocean buoys, radar and satellite imagery, and computer modeling. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also gathers information from special reconnaissance aircraft, which fly over hurricanes and can drop instruments into them to measure wind speeds, air pressure, temperature, and altitude. The latest data gathered on Hurricane Sandy point to an unprecedented and mighty tempest, scientists say.
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yawaramin writes:
IBM has apparently made a breakthrough in arranging carbon nanotubes into the logic gates necessary to make a chip. This should help miniaturise and speed up processors beyond what today's silicon-based technologies are capable of. The article notes though that perfecting the carbon nanotube technology could take up the rest of this decade.
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wiredmikey writes:
Canada and the United States announced Friday they were launching a joint cybsersecurity plan that aims to better protect critical digital infrastructure and improve the response to cyber incidents.
Under the action plan, the US Department of Homeland Security and Public Safety Canada will cooperate to protect vital cyber systems and respond to and recover from any cyber disruptions, by improving collaboration on managing cyber incidents between their respective cyber security operation centers, enhancing information sharing and engagement with the private sector and pursuing US-Canadian collaboration to promote cyber security awareness to the public.
The news came after earlier in the week Canadian Auditor General Michael Ferguson warned that Canada has made only "limited progress" over the past decade to safeguard electrical grids, telecommunications infrastructure, banking systems, manufacturing and transportation, as well as its own computers. Earlier this month, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that the U.S. has drafted new rules for the military that would enable it to move aggressively against digital attacks. The amended rules of engagement underline the need to defend Defense Department computer networks, "but also to be prepared to defend the nation and our national interests against an attack in or through cyberspace," he said. Panetta also called on Congress this week to adopt proposed cyber security legislation and demanded Congress take action after November elections to ensure stable funding for the US military.
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hypnosec writes:
Developers over at Red Hat are busy porting the OpenJDK to ARM’s latest 64bit architecture – the ARMv8, also known as the A64. The current OpenJDK ARM situation is rather unsatisfactory as there for the current 32-bit ARM processors, there are two version of VM for OpenJDK – HotSpot; one being a proprietary version by Oracle and another one free. The free version comes with a just-in-time (JIT) compiler that has quite a smaller footprint, which can’t compete with Oracle’s JIT. To avoid a similar situation for the 64-bit platform, the developers are working on an entirely free software.
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monkeyhybrid writes:
The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla reports on the most detailed images of Uranus ever taken. The infrared sensitivity of the ground based Keck II telescope's NIRC2 instrument enabled astronomers to see below the high level methane based atmosphere that has hampered previous observations, and with unprecedented clarity. If you ever thought Uranus was a dull blue looking sphere then look again; you could easily mistake these images for being of Jupiter!
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sciencehabit writes:
Like all invisible things that are only partly understood, black holes evoke a sense of mystery. Astronomers know that the tremendous gravitational pull of a black hole sucks matter in, and that the material falling in causes powerful jets of particles to shoot out of the hole at nearly the speed of light. But how exactly this phenomenon occurs remains a matter of conjecture, because astronomers have never quite managed to observe the details – until now.
Astrophysicists have taken the closest look to date at the region where matter swirls around a black hole. By measuring the size of the base of a jet shooting out of the supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, the researchers conclude that the black hole must be spinning and that the material orbiting must also be swirling in the same direction. Some of the material from this orbiting "accretion disk" is also falling into the black hole, like water swirling down a drain.
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scibri writes:
Think the imprisonment of Pussy Riot is a miscarriage of justice? Check out the story of their cellmate:
Chemist Olga Nikolaevna Zelenina heads a laboratory at the Penza Agricultural Institute. She is an expert in the biology of hemp and poppy, and is a sought-after expert in legal cases involving narcotics produced from these plants. Last year, she was asked by defence lawyers to give her opinion in a case involving imported poppy seeds. The prosecutors didn't like her evidence though, and now she's in prison accused of complicity in organized drug trafficking.
