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Your Rights Online

Submission + - Cell Carriers Responded to 1.3 million Law Enforcement Requests for Data. (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by
Stirling Newberry
Stirling Newberry writes: "The New York Times reports:

In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a daunting 1.3 million demands for subscriber data last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.

One stinging statistic: AT&T gets 230 requests for data per hour, and turns down only 18 per week. Sprint gets 500,000 requests per year. While many requests are backed by court orders, most are not. Some include "dumps" of tower data, which captures everyone near by at a certain time."

Your Rights Online

Submission + - Icelandic MP Claims US vendetta against Wikileaks (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by
Stirling Newberry
Stirling Newberry writes: "Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir details more of the evidence for what she calls a "judicial vendetta" against Wikileaks, and its volunteers, including attempts to gain access to her twitter account. Her efforts to block the National Defense Authorization have been mentioned by slashdot before. The story was taken up last year by Glenn Greenwald and Wired. As a result the International Parliamentarian Union adopted a resolution on her case.

What's new? She asserts that there is a grand jury investigation into Wikileaks and related organizations, and is calling on Sweden to provide assurances that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange not be re-extradicted to the US."
NASA

Submission + - Is there a Titan Ocean? (nasa.gov)

Submitted by
Stirling Newberry
Stirling Newberry writes: "Luciano Iess and team have hypothesized that Titan joins Earth, Europa, and Ganymede as ocean worlds. They measure the size of the tidal bulges and find that the moon is likely not solid. Team member Jonathan Lunine points out that Titan's methane atmosphere is not stable, so needs some source, perhaps from outgassing. On earth, water means life, and in the future, ice covered ocean worlds are targets for human colonization, since as the late Arthur C. Clarke observed, water is the most precious substance in the universe to humans."
Science

Submission + - US Army Has First Test Flight of Mach 6 Weapon (defense.gov) 2

Submitted by
Stirling Newberry
Stirling Newberry writes: "In a terse press release the US Department of Defense announced the first test of the the AHW, which uses rockets to launch and then glides to its target, in a manner similar to the Space Shuttle's re-entry. Earlier ABC News posted a story with animation video of the concept. Over at DefenseTech they argue that the trajectory being different from an ICBM is meant to show that it is not a first strike, but even the comments don't think that explanation flies.

More likely it is the speed of deployment, the ability to strike targets without going high enough to be seen by many advance warning radars, and without using nuclear warheads makes it a precision surprise attack weapon, a kind of super cruise missile for surprise asymetric attacks."
Science

Submission + - Fracking Likley Cause of Minor Quakes in UK (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by
Stirling Newberry
Stirling Newberry writes: "Non-conventional extraction of hydrocarbons is the next wave of production, including natural gas and oil – at least according to its advocates. One of the most controversial of the technologies being used is hydraulic fracture drilling, or "fracking." Energy companies have been gobbling up google ad words to push the view that the technology is "proven" and "safe," while stories about the damage continue to surface. Adding to the debate are two small tremors in the UK — below 3.0, so very small – that were quite likely the result of fracking there. Because the drilling cracks were shallow, this raises concerns that deeper cracks near more geologically active areas might lead to quakes that could cause serious damage."
Science

Submission + - The Northeast Passage Getting Wider (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
Stirling Newberry
Stirling Newberry writes: "The New York Times reports on the continued expansion of the sea route along the Russian side of the Arctic Ocean. It was only in 2009 that outside ships were allowed to ply this lane, but Russians have used it since the early 20th century. What makes this year a landmark is that the polar ice cap is smaller at its September minimum than before, allowing large container ships and oil tankers–the backbone of sea commerce – to travel between Europe and Asia, saving time and money over the Suez route, as well as avoiding several politically unstable regions of the world. Putin has been pushing development along the route. While the northwest passage is only gradually opening, the opposite side of the Arctic Ocean looks set for expansion. Siberian Riveria anyone?"
Science

Submission + - Paper Disputes Closing Ivins Anthrax Case (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
Stirling Newberry
Stirling Newberry writes: "The New York Times reports that an upcoming paper by Martin E. Hugh-Jones, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, and Stuart Jacobsen – all of whom have long questioned the closing of the case – points to the presence of tin in the spore samples as a sign that the samples mailed had been processed beyond what Ivins, alone could have done. While not disputing that the spores came from Ft. Detrick, Martin-Hughes, who has co-authored several papers on anthrax signatures, contend according to the Times:

it appears likely that Dr. Ivins could not have made the anthrax powder alone with the equipment he possessed, as the F.B.I. maintains. That would mean either that he got the powder from elsewhere or that he was not the perpetrator.

For a good summary of the case from a medical standpoint this article from the Annals of Internal Medicine is an excellent place to start. The review by the National Resources Council that stated that the evidence available was not sufficient to locate the source of the spores is here, with a free pdf download."

Science

Submission + - Oldest Submerged City Visualized with CGI and Ster (nottingham.ac.uk)

Submitted by
Stirling Newberry
Stirling Newberry writes: "Nottingham University's Pavlopetri project spent months measuring an city that sank beneath the waves 3000 years ago, perhaps in a tsunamai.

The result is a BBC documentary that features a detailed CGI reconstruction. The Independent chimes in about the oldest known submerged city first inhabited 5000 years ago and was rediscovered in 1967. Of course, Slashdot readers will want to dig into the (pdf) how stereo mapping was used to create the map in the first place."
Science

Submission + - Dan Schechtman wins 2011 Nobel Chemistry for quasi (nobelprize.org)

Submitted by
Stirling Newberry
Stirling Newberry writes: "Dan Schechtman gets the Nobel 2011 chemistry prize for quasicrystals.

So what's the big deal? A quasi-crystal is to a crystal, what a transcendental number is to a repeating decimal. A fraction like 1/3 written out never ends, but it never changes, just like ordinary squares cover a flat surface, by repeating over and over again, or cubes fill a space. Quasi crystals fill space completely, but do not repeat, even though they show self-similar patterns, the way pi has order, but doesn't repeat. That is, the tessellate in an ordered way, but do not have repeating cells.

In art Girih tiles showed the essential property of being able to cover an infinite space, without repeating. In mathematics, Hao Wang came up with a set of tiles that any Turing Machine could be represented by, and conjectured that they would eventually always repeat. He turned out to be wrong, and over the next decades, tiles that did not repeat, but showed order, were discovered, most famously, though not first, by Penrose.

Physically, when x-rays diffract, that is are scattered, from a crystal, they form a discrete lattice. Quasi-crystals also have an ordered diffraction pattern, and it tiles the way ordered by non repeating tiles do. Quasicrystal patterns were known before Schechtman labelled them.

So why care? Because crystals have only certain symmetries, and that determines their physical properties. Quasicrystals can have different symmetries, and do not bind regularly, and so different physical properties – which means new kinds of materials. Some examples are for highly ductile steel, and in something that is a bit of a by-word among people who study them cooking utensils."

Submission + - Climate Change Driving War? (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by
Stirling Newberry
Stirling Newberry writes: "You may have heard of The Great Moderation which argues that business cycles are less steep, and the Green Revolution. These, it has been argued have lead to "winning the war on war". But not so fast says a study in Science, it may well be that the periods of war, past and present, can be linked to climate change:

As the Thirty Years' War between Europe's ruling dynasties dragged on during the 17th century, soldiers suffered through the coldest few decades Europe had experienced for some time. Far to the east, armies from Manchuria (present day northern China) swept down from the snowy north and breeched the Great Wall of China. Not long after, a plague swept Europe. Why so much tumult? A controversial new study suggests that most of humankind's maladies—from wars to epidemics to economic downturns—can be traced to climate fluctuations.

"

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