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According to reports, there may be a back door built into Skype, which allows connections to be bugged. The company has declined to expressly deny the allegations. At a meeting with representatives of ISPs and the Austrian regulator on lawful interception of IP based services held on 25th June, high-ranking officials at the Austrian interior ministry revealed that it is not a problem for them to listen in on Skype conversations. This has been confirmed to heise online by a number of the parties present at the meeting. Skype declined to give a detailed response to specific enquiries from heise...

It is a high ambition of the Rudd Government to greatly deepen Australia's engagement with India. Well, it is about to get the opportunity to do just that. This week, the Indian parliament passed a momentously important vote of confidence in the Government of Manmohan Singh. This vote could be a pivot point in modern history. It was all about India's nuclear co-operation deal with the US. (SNIP) India is not a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and is not one of the five accepted nuclear weapons states (the US, Britain, France, Russia and China). But it possesses a...

'Radioactive' Woman Shuts Down Russian Airport Terminal Thursday, July 24, 2008 An airport terminal in Vladivostok, Russia was evacuated Thursday after a ‘radioactive’ woman set off an alarm. The woman had just arrived from a flight from Seoul, South Korea when a radiation alarm went off forcing security officers to shutdown the terminal, Interfax news agency reported. The alarm was eventually called off when officials discovered the source of the scare was the woman. According to the news agency, she had just received radiation therapy.

Excerpt - SAN FRANCISCO (AFP)--Internet security researchers warned Thursday that hackers have caught on to a "critical" flaw that lets them control traffic on the Internet. ~ snip ~ "We are in a lot of trouble," said IOActive security specialist Dan Kaminsky, who stumbled upon the Domain Name System (DNS) vulnerability about six months ago and reached out to industry giants to collaborate on a solution. "This attack is very good. This attack is being weaponized out in the field. Everyone needs to patch, please. This is a big deal." ~ snip ~

AS we face $4.50 a gallon gas, we also know that alternative energy sources — coal, oil shale, ethanol, wind and ground-based solar — are either of limited potential, very expensive, require huge energy storage systems or harm the environment. There is, however, one potential future energy source that is environmentally friendly, has essentially unlimited potential and can be cost competitive with any renewable source: space solar power. Science fiction? Actually, no — the technology already exists. A space solar power system would involve building large solar energy collectors in orbit around the Earth. These panels would collect far more...

July 22, 2008 — A new fissure is creeping through the cardiology community, dividing those in favor of risk-factor screening and prevention on one side from those who advocate early screening for the disease itself. The debate is playing out online July 29, 2008 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, with Drs Jay Cohn and Daniel Duprez (University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis) arguing in favor of early identification of disease through simple screening tests, and Drs Philip Greenland and Donald Lloyd-Jones (Northwestern University, Chicago, IL) urging clinicians to focus on risk factors and steer clear of...

After years of false starts, a new industry selling motor fuel made from waste is getting a big push in the United States, with the first commercial sales possible within months. Many companies have announced plans to build plants that would take in material like wood chips, garbage or crop waste and turn out motor fuels. About 28 small plants are in advanced planning, under construction or, in a handful of cases, already up and running in test mode. For decades scientists have known it was possible to convert waste to fuel, but in an era of cheap oil, it...

A team at Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal have produced the world's first field-effect transistor based on paper. The paper layer acts as an "interstrate", with the actual FET components being fabricated onto both sides: so the paper holds the transistor together and acts as an insulator. Amazingly in tests the paper transistor performed better than amorphous silicon transistors and even approaches the performance of state-of-the-art oxide thin-film transistors. Why is this interesting news? Mainly since paper is a lower-cost substrate than silicon, so this invention opens the way for cheap, or even disposable, paper displays, smart labels, RFID...

Citing excessive spending, a special committee of InfoGroup Inc. trimmed founder Vin Gupta's executive powers, removed him as chairman and arranged for him to pay back the company $9 million.

Excerpt - ~ snip ~ The dearth of information has led investors to do their own digging over the years. In 2004, one hedge fund hired private investigators to tail Mr. Jobs to hospital appointments in the hopes figuring out how sick he was, said a portfolio manager at the fund. Eventually, he said, Mr. Jobs "seemed to catch on," and became harder to track. More recently, hedge-fund managers said Tuesday, fund managers have talked of asking doctors to closely analyze pictures of Mr. Jobs to monitor changes in his physical appearance, and have been talking about once again hiring...

Three dozen electric utilities and General Motors Corp. agreed to collaborate on smoothing a path for a plug-in electric vehicle that is slated to roll out in about two years. The collaboration is the first major effort by the two industries on an electric vehicle and includes some of the biggest names in the power sector, so far spanning utilities that operate in nearly 40 states: American Electric Power Co., Austin Energy, Consolidated Edison Inc., Dominion Resources Inc., Duke Energy Corp., DTE Energy Co., Edison International, New York Power Authority, PG&E Corp., Progress Energy Inc. and Public Service Enterprise Group...

<p>The Peruvian village of Compone lies 11,000 ft. above sea level in El Valle Sagrado de los Incas, the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Flat but ringed by mountains, the tallest capped year-round in snow and ice, the valley is graced with a mild climate and mineral-rich soil that for centuries has produced what the Incas called sara—corn.</p>

Bluetooth Big Brother uses mobiles and laptops to track thousands of Britons Last updated at 12:04pm on 21.07.08    Thousands of people in Bath are unaware their movements may have been tracked through their bluetooth mobiles Thousands of Britons' movements have been covertly tracked by scanners placed in streets, pubs and offices for a technology experiment.  The Cityware project run by the University of Bath has secretly placed scanners around the Somerset city, with the first 10 installed 2006. The scanners pick up bluetooth radio signals transmitted from mobile phones and laptops. In a scene reminiscent of the Will Smith...

The folks over at OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, must think we’re pretty stupid. The other day, Chakib Khelil, the current OPEC president, asserted that “the intrusion of bioethanol on the market� is responsible for 40 percent of recent increases in the price of oil. Now how exactly would that work? How does growing sugarcane in Brazil or corn in Iowa push up the price of oil sucked from holes in the ground in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela? If we roasted the corn and put the sugar in coffee — instead of making it into alcohol fuels...

Dutch researchers will be able to publish their controversial report on the Mifare Classic (Oyster) RFID chip in October, a Dutch judge ruled today. Researchers from Radboud University in Nijmegen revealed two weeks ago they had cracked and cloned London's Oyster travelcard and the Dutch public transportation travelcard, which is based on the same RFID chip. Attackers can scan a card reading unit, collect the cryptographic key that protects security and upload it to a laptop. Details are then transferred to a blank card, which can be used for free travel. Around one billion of these cards have been sold...

Scientists are searching within the virtual world and finding real viruses. Every hour, HealthMap, an infectious disease-tracking Web site, culls through news Web sites, public health list servs, the World Health Organization's online pages, and other Web sites in six different languages to pinpoint outbreaks of disease that real-world doctors can then act on. "We were originally thinking about how we could expand disease surveillance and pick up outbreaks earlier than traditional methods," said John Brownstein of Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston, who created HealthMap in September of 2006 with Clark Friefeld, a software developer at Harvard Medical...

LONDON: European researchers are working on mathematical foundations of programming to create fault free software in the future. People are remarkably tolerant of software that goes wrong, but when it comes to faulty cars or TV sets, they would insist that they be set right without much ado, the researchers said. "The software industry is still very immature compared to other branches of engineering," says Bengt Nordström, computer scientist at Chalmers University, Göteborg. "We want to see programming as an engineering discipline but it's not there yet. It's not based on good theory and we don't have good design methods...

U.S. missile defense sensor test called successful 07/18/08 19:07:54 A missile launched from Alaska was successfully tracked Friday by land-, sea- and space-based sensors in a test of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency and the Boeing Co. said. The test demonstrated the most complex integration to date of radars required to support a missile intercept, Boeing said in a statement. The test used a Navy destroyer-based Aegis Long Range Surveillance and Track system in the Pacific; the AN/TPY-2 radar in Juneau, Alaska; the Upgraded Early Warning Radar at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., and the...

WASHINGTON (7-15-08) - Mathematical proof that there is no “climate crisis” appears today in a major, peer-reviewed paper in Physics and Society, a learned journal of the 10,000-strong American Physical Society, SPPI reports. Christopher Monckton, who once advised Margaret Thatcher, demonstrates via 30 equations that computer models used by the UN’s climate panel (IPCC) were pre-programmed with overstated values for the three variables whose product is “climate sensitivity” (temperature increase in response to greenhouse-gas increase), resulting in a 500-2000% overstatement of CO2’s effect on temperature in the IPCC’s latest climate assessment report, published i n 2007. Snip

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a low-power microchip which uses 30,000 times less power in sleep mode and 10 times less in active mode than similar chips now on the market. Named the Phoenix Processor, it is intended for use in cutting-edge sensor-based devices such as medical implants, environment monitors, and surveillance equipment. � Professor David Blaauw (Credit: University of Michigan) In the future, sensors may be implanted in our bodies to measure blood-glucose levels of diabetics or retinal pressure in glaucoma patients. In practical terms, the chips would have to both be very small and...

While an 11-year old, Louisville, Kentucky boy is using a toy radar gun to get drivers to slow down through his neighborhood, the police are finding that real radar guns might not be a match for GPS--at least not when contested in court. According to a press release issued by Rocky Mountain Tracking, an 18-year old man, Shaun Malone, was able to successfully contest a speeding ticket in court using the data from a GPS device installed in his car. This wasn't just any old make-a-left-turn-100-feet-ahead-onto-Maple-Street GPS; this was a vehicle tracking GPS device--the kind used by trucking fleets--or in...

Two days after telling an online town hall meeting that NASA had "failed us miserably" and "wastes a vast amount of money," Houston Rep. John Culberson said Thursday he was weighing legislation to overhaul the structure of the space agency responsible for about 20,000 Houston-area jobs. (snip) "We need revolutionary change, a complete restructuring," Culberson told the Houston Chronicle. "NASA needs complete freedom to hire and fire based on performance, it needs to be driven by the scientists and the engineers, and it needs to be free of politics as much as possible." The fourth-term lawmaker said he was "kicking...

Electron microscope spots hydrogen atoms resting on invisible carbon sheet. The smallest of atoms can now be seen sitting in splendid isolation with a standard transmission electron microscope, thanks to the most fashionable form of carbon, graphene. The technique, developed by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, could help to produce images of individual molecules in atomic detail using relatively conventional laboratory kit. The research is reported in this week's Nature1. A transmission electron microscope (TEM) works by firing a beam of electrons through a very thin sample supported by a scaffold....

Graphene is the strongest material in the world, according to new experiments done by researchers at Columbia University in the US. The secret to the material's extraordinary strength, says the team, lies in the robustness of the covalent carbon-carbon bond and the fact that the graphene monolayers tested were defect-free. Since "wonder material" graphene - sheets of carbon just one atom thick - was discovered in 2004, it has been shown to be an extremely good electrical conductor; a semiconductor that can be used to create transistors; and a very strong material. But now, Columbia University's James Hone, Jeffrey Kysar,...

INGRESS — Interoperable Griffon Reconnaissance Escort Surveillance System: Two Contract Award Press Releases ________________________________________ INGRESS – New Electro-Optical Eyes for the Griffons but any Afghan Deployment?A contract has been awarded to L-3 Wescam to supply 19 MX-15 True HD to satisfy DND’s INGRESS (Inter- operable Griffon Reconnaissance Escort Surveillance System ) Project. The MX-15 True HD electro-optical/ infrared sensor offers full high-definition video (ie: 1080 lines of vertical resolution vs other HD systems’ 720 p ). The 19 INGRESS MX-15 True HD systems will replace obsolescent AN/AAQ-501 E/O turrets (left) now in use on Canadian Forces CH-146 Griffon utility helicopters....

Security researcher and author Kris Kaspersky plans to demonstrate how an attacker can target flaws in Intel's microprocessors to remotely attack a computer using JavaScript or TCP/IP packets, regardless of what operating system the computer is running. Kaspersky will demonstrate how such an attack can be made in a presentation at the upcoming Hack In The Box (HITB) Security Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during October. The proof-of-concept attacks will show how processor bugs, called errata, can be exploited using certain instruction sequences and a knowledge of how Java compilers work, allowing an attacker to take control of the...

AbstractThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions probably caused more than half of the “global warming” of the past 50 years and would cause further rapid warming. However, global mean surface temperature has not risen since 1998 and may have fallen since late 2001. The present analysis suggests that the failure of the IPCC’s models to predict this and many other climatic phenomena arises from defects in its evaluation of the three factors whose product is climate sensitivity: Radiative forcing ΔF; The no-feedbacks climate sensitivity parameter κ; and The feedback multiplier ƒ. Some reasons...

Enlarge ImageGo deep. Huge drilling platforms akin to oil rigs could help sequester carbon dioxide on the ocean floor.Credit: NOAA Scientists may have found a way to chemically lock up a trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide, many times the expected global carbon emissions over the next century. The plan involves injecting the greenhouse gas into huge formations of the porous volcanic rock basalt that lie on the sea floor. The approach would be expensive, however, and a host of questions remain about the technique. Scientists around the world are examining ways to permanently store vast quantities of carbon...

Joe Pappalardo got some crisp, high quality military close-ups of the Spirit of Kansas, the $1.2 billion stealth B-2 bomber that crashed in Guam last February. We published other images of the crash scene before.  Head to Popular Mechanics to see the official timeline of the crash. [Popular Mechanics]

It’s time for Republicans to get serious about the online revolution before it’s too late. While the Democrats keep extending their political reach into cyberspace, too many in our party keep pretending the Internet will go away. Like a predator approaching an ostrich with its head in the sand, the Internet will not disappear. In fact, the Internet is quickly consuming many aspects of our lives, including how we engage with the political world. To ensure our party’s future, Republicans must start to navigate this intersection of technology and politics as deftly as the Democrats have.... As Republicans, we must...

Kajima's floor-by-floor slow demolition is one of those rare things in life that leaves you truly speechless, mouth wide-open, and pinching yourself to be sure this is real while you mutter "what the frak." After all, seeing the video of a 20-floor building submerging into the asphalt as if it was liquid is something that belongs to a sci-fi movie. The stunning process—called daruma-otoshi—is not only almost surrealistic but it helps to reduce the environmental impact. Seriously, I can watch this for hours: YouTube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwf9LoS9Xt8 How do they do it? First they replace the support pillars at ground level...

News Release April 10, 2008 Clarice Nassif Ransom 703-648-4299 cransom@usgs.gov David Ozman 720-244-4543 dozman@usgs.gov -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation—25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate— Reston, VA - North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation. A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil. Related Podcasts...

Rising fuel prices, both in the U.S. and abroad, means that automakers can now offer similar engines in vehicles sold throughout the world. According to Automotive News, General Motors' next small car, the Chevrolet Cruze, will be offered with a new 1.4-liter force-fed four-banger, putting out between 120 and 140 horsepower and returning fuel mileage in the 40 mpg range.

Watch the amazing video. (Six minutes long) Incredible: what more's there to say? Incredible. Based on Judson Laipply's "Evolution of Dance Video," but way better. We get to see a robot doing Vanilla Ice's dance moves better than he did. A robot doing the "walk like an Egyptian" dance. The upcoming MechRC robot has been under development for three years and has 17 independently-controlled servos, and built-in audio. And if this video is anything to go by, when it goes on sale in the fall it should make quite a dent in the miniature robot world.

Alberto Morpurgo and his team of researchers at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands recently attached a micrometer-thick crystal of an organic polymer to a similarly thin organic crystal of a second polymer creating a thin but strongly conducting channel along the junction that acts like a metal. The discovery could lead to a whole new way of making electronics from non-metallic materials, and even new superconductors.   Dr Alberto Morpurgo (Credit: TU Delft’s Kavli Institute of Nanoscience) The thin, flexible crystals which conform to each others’ shape and stick together due to van der Waals forces are both...

Barcelona, Spain: For the first time in the world scientists have succeeded in developing human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) from a single cell, or blastomere, of a 4-cell stage embryo, the 24th annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology heard today (Wednesday 9 July). Dr. Hilde Van de Velde, from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium, said that their research meant that it might be possible in the future to produce hESC lines at an earlier stage without destroying the embryo. Blastomeres are formed in the very early stages of embryonic development. About 24 hours...

Mobile phones have become an essential component of modern living. However, the marked increase in the use of wireless mobile telephony throughout the world has also raised some serious health concerns, as mobile phones utilize electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range. While currently available data does not show any negative health effects resulting from the low levels of electromagnetic energy emitted by mobile phones, there is some conflicting scientific evidence that may be worth additional study, according to FDA. "We don't see a risk looking at currently available data, but we need more definite answers about the biological effects of...

Arsenic risk high in Sumatra, Myanmar, Cambodia: study Fri Jul 11, 2:15 PM ET Eastern Sumatra, the Irrawaddy delta in Myanmar and Cambodia's Tonle Sap lake are among areas in Southeast Asia facing a high risk of arsenic contamination in the water, according to a study published on Friday. The researchers use innovative digitalised techniques, drawing on geology, geography and soil chemistry, to compile a "probability map" of naturally-occurring arsenic concentrations in five Southeast Asian countries and Bangladesh. The map is intended as a useful pointer for health watchdogs, urban planners and water engineers worried about concentrations of this poison...

An incident recently occurred at an outpatient imaging center in western New York State, in which a firearm spontaneously discharged in a 1.5-T MR imaging environment with active shielding. To our knowledge, this is the first documented case of such an occurrence. ------cut--------- An off-duty police officer went to an outpatient imaging center (not affiliated with our institution) in western New York State to have an MR imaging examination. The facility housed a 1.5-T MR unit (Signa; General Electric Medical Systems, Milwaukee, WI) with active shielding. The officer was carrying a model 1991 A-1 compact.45 caliber semiautomatic pistol (Colt's Manufacturing,...

Solar-power costs could be slashed by cheap collectors, claim researchers. A simple sheet of glass coated with dye could be enough to cut the costs of solar power. Concentrating light onto photovoltaic cells could push down solar power costs.Donna Coveney, MIT That's the claim from researchers who have created a 'solar concentrator' that harvests photons and funnels them into photovoltaic devices. The device allows relatively small solar cells to harness rays from a much larger area. Mirrors that track the Sun are already used to deliver extra light onto solar panels and maximize their electricity output. But these mirrors can...

MIT team increases efficiency of solar panels Boston Globe, United States - 42 minutes ago said Jonathan Mapel, an author of the study and MIT graduate student who has co-founded a startup called Covalent Solar to turn the idea into a product. ... See-Through Solar Hack Could Double Panel Efficiency Wired News - 1 hour ago Towards that end, colleagues of his at MIT have spun out a new company, Covalent Solar, to commercialize the technology. Dyeing for More Solar Power Greentech Media, MA - 1 hour ago A team of MIT researchers is starting a new company, Covalent Solar,...

A British company is claiming the hydrogen age could be a little closer after it unveiled a major innovation. The new hydrogen refuelling cell in action It has created a home filling station which would solve one of the biggest problems surrounding hydrogen powered cars It claims to have dramatically cut the cost of creating hydrogen and has developed a device the size of a fridge freezer which can fit in your garage and create its own supply of hydrogen. At the moment there are only three hydrogen filling stations in Britain and the cost of fully equiping the country...

Excerpt - The Justice Department has ended its criminal investigation of backdated stock options at Apple Inc., deciding not to bring charges against the company or several current and former executives it had been probing for two years, people familiar with the case said. ~ snip ~

CCC rating (That's Credit crunch computer cock-up) Moody's, the ratings agency, is reviewing its computer models and setting up a central monitoring system after admitting that a bug led it to incorrectly grade several European mortgage debt instruments. The agency admits that it incorrectly gave its highest AAA rating to about $1bn worth of European "constant proportion debt obligations". Triple-A ratings are required before many investors like pension funds are allowed to invest. Following a review of its processes Moody's found that its staff had not acted to cover up the error with the modelling. But it found some members...

Pre-quake changes seen in rocks The San Andreas Fault extends almost the full length of California Scientists have made an important advance in their efforts to predict earthquakes, the journal Nature says. A team of US researchers has detected stress-induced changes in rocks that occurred hours before two small tremors in California's San Andreas Fault. The observations used sensors lowered down holes drilled into the quake zone. The team says we are a long way from routine tremor forecasts but the latest findings hold out hope that such services might be possible one day. "If you had 10 hours'...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Flying saucers may soon be more fact than mere science fiction. University of Florida mechanical and aerospace engineering associate professor Subrata Roy has submitted a patent application for a circular, spinning aircraft design reminiscent of the spaceships seen in countless Hollywood films. Roy, however, calls his design a “wingless electromagnetic air vehicle,” or WEAV. The proposed prototype is small – the aircraft will measure less than six inches across – and will be efficient enough to be powered by on-board batteries. Roy said the design can be scaled up and theoretically should work in a much larger...

LONDON: Frozen embryos are better than fresh when it comes to producing healthier babies using in-vitro fertilisation, a new study has revealed. Researchers in Denmark have found that babies born from thawed embryos were heavier at birth and were unlikely to suffer abnormalities as compared to those born from fresh embryos. “Only very top-quality embryos survive the freezing and thawing process. And you only get pregnancies in patients with lots of good embryos to freeze,” lead researcher Dr Anja Pinborg was quoted by The Daily Telegraph as saying. The researchers at Copenhagen University reached the conclusion after comparing over...

Enlarge ImageNanomission.Nanoparticles (blue) hit their target in a pancreatic tumor (top); healthy pancreatic tissue without tumor (bottom left); a pancreatic tumor with nanoparticle (green) targeting the tumor blood cells (bottom right)Credit: (top) Milan Makale/UCSD Cancer Center; (bottom) Bharat Majeti, Eric Murphy, and Milan Makale/UCSD The drugs cancer patients take to destroy their tumors also cause debilitating side effects such as nausea, weight loss, and even heart problems. But now researchers report that they can curb the spread of cancer cells in mice with drug concentrations far lower than the standard dose. The key is using a microscopic particle that...

Researchers at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA have solved the structure of a class of proteins known as sodium glucose co-transporters (SGLTs), which pump glucose into cells. These transport proteins are used in the treatment of chronic diarrhea via oral rehydration therapy, saving the lives of millions of children each year. The solution of the SGLT structure will accelerate development of new drugs designed to treat patients with diabetes and cancer. Led by Jeff Abramson and Ernest Wright of the UCLA Department of Physiology, the research team produced an "atomic snap shot" of an SGLT protein. Using...