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Microsoft was aware of a critical vulnerability in an Internet Explorer component at least 12 months before attackers started targeting it in lethal exploits that take full control of end-users' PCs, a member of its security team said Wednesday. The disclosure comes as attacks targeting the MSVidCtl ActiveX control vulnerability have increased exponentially. On Monday, online ads distributed by through the Giant Realm network on popular gaming websites began including code that exploits the bug, according to security firm ScanSafe. The ads mean that anyone using IE to browse sites such as diii.net and incgamers.com are risk if they run...

DNA could be the answer to sorting different kinds of carbon nanotubes, say US researchers. Short strings of synthetic DNA wind onto nanotubes in a very sequence-dependent way, which has allowed researchers to separate 12 of the most common types of tubes from the inevitable mixtures that form when nanotubes are synthesised. Since the physical and electronic properties of nanotubes are heavily dependent on the size and structure of the tube, separating the mixtures could lead to much more effective nanotube-based devices and even ways of making specific types of tubes selectively.Ming Zheng of Dupont Central R&D, Delaware, and Anand Jagota from...

Less than two years ago, it looked like the ethical debate over human embryonic stem cells might be coming to an end. In November 2007, two research groups, one at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and another at Kyoto University in Japan, announced that they had succeeded in directly reprogramming human skin cells into stem cells. Earlier this year, Canadian and British researchers reported even better news. They have developed a new way to create such cells without using viruses, which pose a risk of producing tumors by damaging the transformed cells' genes. Yesterday, as many as 700 new stem cell...

US researchers have developed an efficient way of producing hydrogen from urine - a feat that could not only fuel the cars of the future, but could also help clean up municipal wastewater. Using hydrogen to power cars has become an increasingly attractive transportation fuel, as the only emission produced is water - but a major stumbling block is the lack of a cheap, renewable source of the fuel. Gerardine Botte of Ohio University may now have found the answer, using an electrolytic approach to produce hydrogen from urine - the most abundant waste on Earth - at a fraction of the cost...

ROME: Fresh evidence of continued collusion of Pakistan's official agencies with terrorist groups plotting attacks on India has cast a shadow on resumption of full-scale talks between the estranged neighbours. According to sources, state actors in Pakistan were seeking to help terrorist groups using Thuraya satellite phones to plot attacks on India by camouflaging the location of the phones. The deception game, spoofing in intelligence parlance, involves setting up transmitters near the terrorist bases to block the signals from Thuraya sets which can help pinpoint location of the users. The transmitters cannot be set up or remain hidden to Pakistan's...

Microsoft on Monday warned of a vulnerability in its Video ActiveX Control that could allow an attacker to take control of a PC if the user visits a malicious Web site. There have been limited attacks exploiting the hole, which affects Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, Microsoft said on its Security Response Center blog. This is the second DirectShow security hole Microsoft has announced in the past few months. The company has yet to provide a security update for a vulnerability announced in May that involves the way DirectX handles QuickTime files. Since there are no by-design uses for...

There is, perhaps, no subject that currently stands greater in importance—not to mention confusion, hype and hysteria—than the topic of climate change (formerly referred to as global warming). Regardless of man’s influence on the climate, policies under active debate and consideration could entirely change the way that we produce, and consume, energy to fuel our economy and lifestyle. This issue spans the globe, impacting both developed and developing countries. Whether the planet is in peril, or whether the risk is an artifice, potential climate change legislation will come with inescapable consequences, both intended and unintended; yet, the climate benefits may...

The distant early warning line clean-up project (update to BG–01.013)BG–09.048 - June 29, 2009BackgroundDuring the Cold War, North America relied on radar networks to provide an early warning of airborne attacks inbound over the North Pole. From the early 1950s, a series of isolated radar stations were constructed in Canada, Alaska, and Greenland to identify unfriendly aircraft and direct fighter planes that would intercept them. The most northerly of the networks, the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line of radar sites, was established in the late 1950s and extended along the Arctic coastline (roughly along the 69th parallel) from northwestern Alaska...

In 2009, portability is the default state of affairs with computers, since laptops outsell desktop PCs. But in the 1960s, the typical computer was a room-filling mainframe; minicomputers, which were merely the size of a refrigerator, were the small computers of the day.Which didn’t mean that folks weren’t craving the concept of mobile computing even back then. I was just rummaging through Google’s invaluable archive of several decades of Computerworld, and came across a short item from March 1968 on carrying cases for the typewriter-like Teletype terminals that were then used to interface with mainframes and minis. Anderson Jacobson sold...

A piece of research has shown that anger or mental stress can increase the flow of blood in the brain. Led by Tasneem Naqvi and Hahn Hyuhn from the University of Southern California and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the study involved a series of ultrasound experiments. It showed that mental stress causes carotid artery dilation, and increases brain blood flow. The researchers say that that dilatory reflex was absent in people with high blood pressure. They evaluated carotid artery reactivity and brain blood flow in response to mental stress in 10 healthy young volunteers (aged between 19 and 27 years), 20...

LONDON: The smell of fear really does exist, according to a new study, which also suggests that being terrified is infectious. The study, conducted by Dr Bettina Pause and colleagues at the University of Dusseldorf in Germany, suggests that people subconsciously detect whether others are scared by picking up chemicals they release from their bodies. Researchers believe the signals can be contagious and can spread around a group. For the study, researchers put cotton pads under the armpits of 49 student volunteers before they were due to start a university exam, reports the Telegraph. Pause and colleagues also collected sweat...

A post-launch examination of the Unha-2 By David Wright and Theodore A. Postol | 29 June 2009 Article Highlights * The launch vehicle North Korea tested on April 5, the Unha-2, represents a significant advance over North Korea's previous launchers. * In particular, it would have the capability to reach the continental United States with a payload of 1 ton or more if Pyongyang modified it for use as a ballistic missile. * However, if key Unha-2's components were acquired from Russia and elsewhere, North Korea's domestic missile development program may be much more limited than commonly assumed. North Korea...

According to CNET, the RIAA has emerged victorious in their case against Usenet.com for wholesale copyright infringement. Filed back in 2007, the RIAA took particular issue with the outfit's ads promising "access to millions of MP3 files" for the monthly $19 payment. While the advertising was bad enough, the case was made substantially easier for the RIAA thanks to the fact that Usenet.com was destroying evidence on hard drives, often supplying incorrect information -- and even sent several employees to Europe to prevent them from testifying. In a statement, the RIAA lauds the courts for taking action against Usenet.com's "egregious...

Researchers at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland have created nanocapacitors capable of both high power concentrations and large storage capacities. Traditionally, capacitors offer high levels of power discharge and batteries offer large amounts of storage but this is the first time scientists have managed to combine both properties in the same device, albeit one too small to be practical.   Arrays of capacitors shown in an electron micrograph overlaid onto a diagram outlining their design (Credit: A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland) The new battery system, developed by Gary Rubloff and his team...

Engineers at the Univ. of Leeds are working on a new type of body armor made from cement. The new vests will combine super-strong cement with recycled carbon fiber materials to make a material tough enough to withstand most types of bullets. The cement vest project, still at the early research stage, is being carried out the School of Civil Engineering at the Univ. Dr Philip Purnell, who is leading the team, said: “By using cement instead of alumina we are confident we can deliver a cost-effective level of protection for many people at risk. It should be good enough...

TEL AVIV, Israel (UPI) -- The day Osama bin Laden's suicide squads attacked the United States, Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan, who in 2001 headed Israel's National Security Council, was conducting a "strategic dialogue" in New Delhi with his Indian counterpart, Brajesh Mishra. Dayan's presence in the Indian capital on Sept. 11, 2001, was, of course, pure happenstance. But the events of that fateful day cemented a strategic relationship that has never stopped growing and has strengthened Israel's burgeoning influence in southern and central Asia. Today, Israel has overtaken Russia as India's leading defense supplier. Both Israel and India, one Jewish,...

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to consider a legal challenge by television networks and Hollywood studios to Cablevision Systems Corp.'s next-generation digital video recorder, clearing the way for the cable company to offer the new service this year. The networks and studios argued that Cablevision's new remote-storage DVR violated federal copyright laws. Cablevision's service would allow customers to record and store television shows on central computer servers maintained by Cablevision instead of having to record them on expensive DVR cable boxes installed in their homes. Cablevision says the system would allow it to provide DVR services at lower costs,...

TOKYO — Toyota Motor Corp. says it has developed a way of steering a wheelchair by just detecting brain waves, without the person having to move a muscle or shout a command. Toyota's system, developed in a collaboration with researchers in Japan, is among the fastest in the world in analyzing brain waves, it said in a release Monday. Past systems required several seconds to read brain waves, but the new technology requires only 125 milliseconds — or 125 thousandths of a second.

When Bryan speaks, then I rejoice. His is the strange composite voice Of many million singing souls Who make world-brotherhood their choice — Vachel Lindsay, American poet, 1915 William Jennings Bryan was rarely at a loss for words. His impassioned oratory spellbound congressmen during his two terms in the U.S. House and thrilled thousands of voters during the presidential campaigns of 1896 and1900. But during his third run for the White House, 100 years ago, Bryan had trouble speaking in the intimacy of his own home. “Mr. Bryan seemed a little nervous when he first started, much more so, he...

So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement. But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases. And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn't help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.... The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid...

A question on the letters page of the September 2002 issue of Fortean Times -- a British magazine which covers fringe science or "Fortean" subjects -- piqued my interest. Was it true that a manhole cover, accidentally blasted upwards at escape velocity during the American nuclear tests in the 1950s, was in fact the first manmade object in space, beating Sputnik 1 by a long way? Or was it just an urban myth? The Internet is the natural home of the urban myth: the two could have been made for each other. The question therefore was: could it find room...

Clearer terminology could alleviate confusionIn the exploding field of stem cell biology, confusion pervades among some newcomers, and even veterans. The question is simple: When do we call a cell - stem cell?Some would argue that a fertilized egg is the ultimate stem cell. It is totipotent, giving rise to the embryo and extra-embryonic structures. The more fate-restricted cells of the inner cell mass of a blastocyst give rise to all body tissues and, with appropriate culture, to embryonic stem cells, which are considered to be pluripotent. Yet another term is reserved for the even more fate-restricted often multipotent stem...

FTL writes "While in orbit a metal knob floated between a window and the dashboard of Atlantis. Once back on Earth, the shuttle contracted, wedging the knob firmly in place and damaging the window. Initial attempts to free the knob have failed and engineers may need six months to disassemble that section of the orbiter. Given that the shuttle program will probably end next year anyway, such a delay might mean scrapping Atlantis early rather than repairing it. Efforts to remove the knob using less invasive techniques continue."

Here's a case for which solving an energy problem could ease a challenging environmental problem as well. Researchers have discovered that carbonized chicken feathers could provide an inexpensive, environmentally friendly way to store hydrogen fuel for future motor vehicles. If the concept is proven--and perhaps a bigger if, accepted by the automobile industry--it could go a long way toward helping to dispose of the 2.7 billion kilograms of chicken feathers generated each year by commercial poultry operations. Hydrogen is a leading alternative fuel for vehicles. The byproducts of its combustion are nonpolluting, and its source--water--is superabundant. One hitch is the...

Secrets of Space Blobs Revealed By Clara MoskowitzStaff Writerposted: 24 June 200902:59 pm ET Perplexing "blobs" of gas seen in the faraway universe are a bit more comprehensible thanks to a new study. Glowing with an eerie brightness, the massive blobs seem to surround very young galaxies. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes examined the distant gas balls and found that their luminosity is likely due to energy released by black holes and star formation inside the galaxies. "For ten years the secrets of the blobs had been buried from view, but now we've uncovered their power source,"...

The Weirdest Object in the Solar System? By Andrea ThompsonSenior Writerposted: 22 June 200907:42 am ET The dwarf planets and other objects that litter the Kuiper belt in the far reaches of our solar system are a strange bunch, but astronomers have found what they think might be the weirdest one.Discovered on Dec. 28, 2004 (catalogued as 2003 EL61 and nicknamed "Santa" for a time), the minor planet now known as the dwarf planet Haumea, to honor its Hawaiian discovery, is as big across as Pluto and one-third of its mass, but shaped something "like a big squashed cigar,"...

Ocean Hidden Inside Saturn's Moon By Jeanna BrynerSenior Writerposted: 24 June 200901:03 pm ET Astronomers have found the strongest evidence yet for an ocean beneath the icy shell of Saturn's Enceladus, suggesting it could join the exclusive club of watery moons in our solar system. The salty water is likely feeding jets of water-ice that spurt from the moon's south polar region. Such plumes were first reported in 2005, and ever since, astronomers have suspected a liquid ocean might lie beneath the icy shell of Saturn's sixth largest moon. The new finding, published in the June 25 issue of...

RAY GUNSBoeing Advanced Tactical Laser Fires High-Power Laser In Flight More tests are planned to demonstrate ATL's military utility. The system is designed to destroy, damage or disable targets with little to no collateral damage. by Staff Writers Albuquerque NM (SPX) Jun 23, 2009 Boeing and the U.S. Air Force have successfully fired the high-power laser aboard the Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) aircraft for the first time in flight. During the test, ATL took off from Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., and fired its laser while flying over White Sands Missile Range, N.M., successfully hitting a target board located on...

Scientists in Germany have observed a single molecule of HCl dissociating into its component ions in water - and have discovered that just four water molecules are needed for complete dissociation of the acid. The team say that their findings, made under ultracold conditions, should help scientists understand nanoscale chemical transformations at very low temperatures, including those occurring in stratospheric clouds and interstellar media. Previous studies into the dissociation mechanism of the strong acid HCl at ultracold temperatures had left a puzzle. Normally, such reactions require thermal energy, but at ultracold temperatures this thermal energy is not available. Now, Martina Havenith and...

Video Link, part 1 of 3, see Pajamas TV. Part 2 of 3 through the navigation on the right of video page, or Click HERE

SCO has filed its proposed plan. I have only quickly skimmed it, but what I see immediately is that it wishes to sue Linux users, and it lists a Java patent, and I'm guessing there may just be a connection someday. Who knows? SCO loves to sue, I've decided. It wants to sell some of the Mobility business, retaining part of it, along with selling the Unix business and "many of [SCO's] subsidiaries" to an entity called UnXis. I've never heard of it either. Think there might be trademark issues? Try going to Google and search for "unXis Delaware" and...

ChemSpider, the open-access online database of structure-searchable chemical information, has found a new home with the UK's Royal Society of Chemistry. The move is hoped to enable ChemSpider to expand in scope and become a primary resource for online chemistry data.The acquisition of ChemSpider builds on an existing partnership between the two organisations, which last year saw the launch of a web-based resolver for the IUPAC's International Chemical Identifier (InChI) and its more streamlined cousin, the InChIKey, which allow chemical structures to be associated with strings of text. Graphical representations of chemical structures, while a valuable means of communication between human chemists,...

Enlarge ImageWake-up call. The sun's jet streams (in red, right) have reached their critical position, and soon the first sunspots of the new solar cycle may mar the star's currently placid-looking surface (inset).Credit: National Solar Observatory/GONG (main image); SOHO/MDI (inset) Maybe old Sol didn't hear the alarm clock. After a mysterious 2-year delay, the next 11-year solar cycle seems ready to begin, scientists say. That means the reemergence of sunspots, and with them periodic electromagnetic assaults on global navigation, communications, and power supplies--as well as brilliant auroras in the polar regions. For unknown reasons, the sun goes through cycles...

The reason why those cold spells now come less frequently is still unknown Scientists have peered back in time with a new analytical technique to see atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide more than 2 million years into the past. The findings indicate that a long-term decline in the levels of that greenhouse gas isn’t to blame for a geologically recent shift in the frequency of ice ages, scientists say. The record of ice ages in North America stretches back 2.4 million years (SN: 2/5/05, p. 94). Until about 1.2 million years ago, ice ages in the Northern Hemisphere occurred about...

PHOENIX (Reuters) - New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson broke ground on Friday on construction of Spaceport America, the world's first facility built specifically for space-bound commercial customers and fee-paying passengers. The $198 million project, which is being funded by the New Mexico state government, is located on a remote high-desert range near the town of Truth or Consequences.

Inside the sun: more than just a glowing ball The unusually long quiet period of the Sun’s present activity may be due to the motion of “sluggish� jet streams beneath the solar surface, according to scientists at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Arizona, US. The scientists’ observations, which show an east–west jet stream has taken a year longer to migrate south by 10° than in the previous solar cycle, also indicate that the sun is moving into its next cycle. “We need to continue these observations for many, many more years to fully understand what is going on,� said...

Look to the retina as a likely site for the first success in stem-cell therapy. "The eye is the best place to test proof-of-concept for stem cell-based therapies," says Martin Friedlander of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Friedlander is co-founder of EyeCyte, also in La Jolla, whose investors include industry heavyweight Pfizer. Several laboratories are exploring stem-cell-derived transplants to delay or prevent blindness, and Pfizer recently put up funds for a project nearing human trials at University College London (UCL). Why the eye appeal? As organs go, it is easily accessible, somewhat protected from the immune system's...

It was an idea born out of curiosity in the physics lab, but now a new type of ‘laser’ for generating ultra-high frequency sound waves instead of light has taken a major step towards becoming a unique and highly useful 21st century technology... ...have produced a new type of acoustic laser device called a Saser. It’s a sonic equivalent to the laser and produces an intense beam of uniform sound waves on a nano scale.

Aliens Lose in Switch to Digital TV By Seth ShostakSenior Astronomer, SETI Instituteposted: 18 June 200905:07 pm ET The United States is finally ditching analog television broadcasting, and the rest of the world is doing the same. Unless you've got a converter, the government has just morphed your trusty analog boob tube into an inert piece of furniture. Mind you, this is a good thing. Digital TV (DTV) offers better picture quality. For example, the ghost images caused by signal reflections off that high-rise office building down the block will be a thing of the past. In addition, you...

When the global warming alarmist house of cards finally collapses, exposing the pseudo-science/scare-journalism axis that has perpetrated the world's greatest mass delusion, among the first led out into the public square for ritual humiliation ought to be BBC ‘science' and ‘environment' correspondents. Firstly, for submitting fraudulent CV's to BBC Human Resources claiming they actually knew something about science. Secondly, for asserting, as public service (public-paid) broadcasters, that they were only reporting ‘what scientists were saying'. No doubt they will also adopt the same mitigation Scoop's William Boot called upon - that they were really only Gardening Correspondents who took a...

Flight AF 447 on 01 june 2009 A330-200, registered F-GZCP During the third Press Conference that was held on 17 June on the progress of the investigation into the accident to flight AF 447, the BEA presented the sea search operations that are under way. It contains a map of the locations of the airplane debris, including the fin, that were recovered from the surface of the sea. This debris field corresponds to a relatively small area with a drift towards the north. A targeted undersea search area has been established based on the position of the parts recovered –...

A robotic sub called Nereus has reached the deepest-known part of the ocean. The dive to 10,902m (6.8 miles) took place on 31 May, at the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench, located in the western Pacific Ocean. This makes Nereus the deepest-diving vehicle currently in service and the first vehicle to explore the Marianas Trench since 1998. The unmanned vehicle is remotely operated by pilots aboard a surface ship via a lightweight tether. Its thin, fibre-optic tether to the research vessel Kilo Moana allows the submersible to make deep dives and be highly manoeuvrable. THE NEREUS SUBMERSIBLE Weight on...

The election crisis in Iran has ignited a full-on guerrilla cyberwar, with Twitterers and techies across the globe pitching in to help protesters in that country access the Internet, and official Iranian government Web sites being knocked offline.

In yet another bizarre twist in the interminable legal dispute over source code allegedly illegally copied from UNIX System V into Linux, the SCO Group, which claims ownership of the disputed code, has secured a last-gasp reprieve from the threat of liquidation. Immediately before the crucial liquidation hearing in the bankruptcy court, SCO CEO Darl McBride signed an agreement with a company by the name of Gulf Capital Partners, backed by well-known investor Stephen Norris. Caught out by the surprise development, all parties have agreed to postpone the liquidation hearing until the 16th or the 27th of July. According to...

The MPAA apparently said that the “enemies of copyright have really done a good job at creating the false premise that the interest of copyright holders and the interest of society as a whole are antagonistic” during the World Copyright Summit. The worry is that their pro-copyright advocacy perspective is fading away in the public conscious. In an interesting report from IP-Watch where there were a few choice words levelled against those that disagreed with the view-points of the copyright industry. Apparently, Fritz Attaway suggested that it's false to assume that the rights of the industry and the interest of...

New electricity meters being rolled out to millions of homes and businesses are riddled with security bugs that could bring down the power grid, according to a security researcher who plans to demonstrate several attacks at a security conference next month. The so-called smart meters for the first time provide two-way communications between electricity users and the power plants that serve them. Prodded by billions of dollars from President Obama's economic stimulus package, utilities in Seattle, Houston, Miami, and elsewhere are racing to install them as part of a plan to make the power grid more efficient. Their counterparts throughout...

You'd think nothing would get under the skin of search giant Google. But co-founder Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft's rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service, The Post has learned. Brin, according to sources inside the tech behemoth, is himself leading the team of search-engine specialists in an effort to determine how Bing's crucial search algorithm differs from that used by the company he founded in 1998 with Stanford University classmate Larry Page. .. Microsoft prefers not to use the term...

News From The American Chemical Society, May 13, 200919 May 2009    Advance in detecting melamine-adulterated food Researchers in Indiana are reporting an advance toward faster, more sensitive tests for detecting melamine, the substance that killed at least 6 children and sickened 300,000 children in China who drank milk and infant formula adulterated with the substance. The improved tests may ease global concerns about food safety, the researchers say. Their report is scheduled for the May 27 issue of ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication. In the new study, Lisa Mauer and colleagues note that tests...

Experts Say Chinese Filter Would Make PCs Vulnerable By ANDREW JACOBS BEIJING — Filtering software that the government has mandated for all new computers in China is so technically flawed that outsiders can easily infiltrate a user’s machine to monitor Internet activity, steal personal data or plant destructive viruses, experts who have studied the program say. “It contains serious vulnerabilities, which is especially worrisome given how widely the software will be adopted,” said J. Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan who examined the program. “What we found was only the tip of the iceberg.” Known...

B.C. RCMP have asked seven residents in the path of a growing central B.C. forest fire for their dental records after they refused to leave the area earlier this week. RCMP spokesman Cpl. Dan Moskaluk said Friday the move was not a scare tactic. "It's just the fact of the matter. We use dental records to identify charred remains," he said. "This is done all the time." But Tyaughton Lake, B.C., resident Reg Dubeck said he hasn't seen smoke or fire in five days and the way he and his neighbours are being treated is unbelievable. "Right now we're under...