The News and Info Blog

UK Strike Could Turn the Tide of a Generation

2011-12-02T13:40:00.002-06:00

It was the wrong time to call a strike. Industrial action would inflict "huge damage" on the economy. It would make no difference. Public sector workers wouldn't turn out and public opinion would be against them. Downing Street was said to be "privately delighted" the unions had "fallen into their trap".

The campaign against today's day of action has been ramped up for weeks, and in recent days has verged on the hysterical. The Mail claimed the street cleaners and care workers striking to defend their pensions were holding the country to "ransom", led by "monsters", while Rupert Murdoch's Sun called them "reckless" and "selfish".

Michael Gove and David Cameron reached for the spirit of the 1980s, the education secretary damning strike leaders as "hardliners itching for a fight", and the prime minister condemning the walkouts as the "height of irresponsibility", while also insisting on the day they had been a "damp squib".

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Greece has a right to face austerity on its own terms

2011-11-08T12:34:00.000-06:00

Aside from blaming politicians and bankers, Greeks are angry at Germany for making them a scapegoat for a larger crisis

For days now, Greeks have been indoors glued to their television sets, following the political "thriller" (as the channels like to call it) unfolding on the cliff edge of the country's threatened ejection from the eurozone. In case Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy hadn't put it plainly enough when they called George Papandreou on the carpet in Cannes, EU commissioner, Olli Rehn, issued his ultimatum on Sunday: Greece had 24 hours to form a unity government or be plucked like a festering thorn from Europe's side. As the tortuous negotiations between the leaders of the two main parties wore on, yet another deadline appeared: the moment when the markets would open in Tokyo. The unity government was duly announced, but the wrangling continues: it still has neither a leader nor a cabinet.

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Newspapers to disappear by 2040: UN agency chief

2011-10-15T09:31:00.000-05:00

Newspapers will disappear and be replaced by digital versions by 2040, the UN intellectual property agency’s chief said in an interview published on Monday.

Francis Gurry, who heads the World Intellectual Property Organisation told the daily La Tribune de Geneve that “in a few years, there will no longer be printed newspapers as we know it today.”

“It’s an evolution. There’s no good or bad about it. There are studies showing that they will disappear by 2040. In the United States, it will end in 2017,” he said.

Gurry noted that in the United States there are already more digital copies sold than paper copies of newspapers. In cities, there are also fewer bookshops.

Source

Study seeks to prove theory humans still evolving

2011-10-15T09:29:00.000-05:00

OTTAWA — Rare evidence of the long-held belief that humans are still evolving has been unearthed in the parish records of a French-Canadian island on the Saint Lawrence seaway, researchers say.

Ile aux Coudres is located 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Quebec City. Between 1720 and 1773, 30 families settled there and the population reached 1,585 people by the 1950s.

Poring over church registers containing detailed records of dates of births, marriages and deaths, researchers found the age of women when they had their first child fell from about 26 to 22 years over 140 years from 1799 to just before 1940.

After discounting environmental and social factors, they concluded this substantial change from one generation to the next “largely occurred at the genetic level.”

“It is often claimed that modern humans have stopped evolving because cultural and technological advancements have annihilated natural selection,” says the study led by Emmanuel Milot at the University of Quebec in Montreal.

“Our study supports the idea that humans are still evolving,” it concludes. “It also demonstrates that micro-evolution is detectable over just a few generations in humans.”

Full piece

Hacking Crisis Edges Closer to British PM Cameron

2011-10-15T09:26:00.002-05:00

David Cameron will be forced to explain damaging new revelations today that have dragged him deeper into the phone-hacking scandal.

It emerged last night that Neil Wallis, the former News of the World deputy editor who was arrested last week, worked for the Conservative Party before last year's election. He gave "informal" advice to Andy Coulson, his former boss at the NOTW, who resigned from the paper over the hacking affair but was later appointed Mr Cameron's director of communications.

In a second blow to the Prime Minister, it was revealed that his chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, had appealed to Scotland Yard not to mention hacking during a Downing Street briefing last September, four months before Mr Coulson quit his No 10 post. Labour said the disclosure showed Mr Cameron could not do his job properly because of the cloud cast by the hacking controversy.

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Tavis Smiley on Morning Joe: Bush lied us into Iraq

2011-10-15T09:21:00.000-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Separating fact from fiction on U.S. economic myths

2011-10-15T09:13:00.000-05:00

With the recent Iowa straw poll and President Obama’s bus tour, Americans are hearing a cacophony of arguments about the wobbly economy. The federal stimulus package passed in 2009 was either a deficit-busting failure full of wasteful projects or an unparalleled rescue that would have been more successful if it had only been bigger. Taxes are either stifling or the lowest they’ve ever been. America needs to invest in infrastructure, or “infrastructure” is merely a euphemism for more government spending. So, here’s our guide to the most prevalent economic myths.

Click to read more

Anti-Wall Street protests go global

2011-10-15T09:02:00.000-05:00

Tax the super-rich or riots will rage in 2012

2011-08-18T21:50:00.000-05:00

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — What a year. Rage in London, Egypt, Athens, Damascus. All real. Just a metaphor in the new “Planet of the Apes” film? No, much more. Warning: More rage is dead ahead. Across our planet a new generation is filled with rage. High unemployment. Raging inflation. Dreams lost. Hope gone. While the super -rich get richer and richer.

Listen to that hissing: The fuse is rapidly burning, warning us. Wake up before the rage explodes in your face. This firestorm is endangering America’s future. From forces outside, yes. But far more deadly, from deep within our collective psyche. We have lost our moral compass. We are self-destructing.

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Republicans will not be re-elected in 2012

2011-08-18T21:47:00.001-05:00

There has been various circumstantial evidence that the public’s dissatisfaction with the performance of Congress, particularly during the debt ceiling debate, could threaten the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Disapproval ratings for the Congress are at record highs, as are disapproval ratings for the Republican Party. Other polls show record numbers of Americans saying that their representative should not be re-elected, that most members of Congress should not be re-elected, or both.

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Why Twitter is obsolete

2011-08-05T13:45:00.000-05:00

Twitter boasts 200 million users and 350 billion tweets per day, and it's a ubiquitous reference on mainstream TV. Visit Twitter today, and it's a hive of frenetic activity. Millions of people rely on the service for news, commentary, blog updates and social interaction. Twitter is about to close an $800 million funding round, which values the company at about $8 billion.

Suddenly, however, the service has been rendered obsolete by Google's new Google+ service, and also by the company's failure to capitalize on its five-year window of opportunity to innovate its way to indispensability.

It's only a matter of time before Twitter becomes a ghost town. Here's why.

Read on

'We are dying the way all imperiums die'

2011-06-27T03:52:00.003-05:00

Project Icarus: Demonstration of Fusion Pulse Propulsion

2011-04-07T21:23:00.002-05:00

Project Icarus is a theoretical design study of an interstellar starship. This movie illustrates how a Fusion Pulse Propulsion system works, which was the engine used for the 1970s Project Daedalus. Fusion releases, on average, about a million times from energy than traditional chemical rockets, and so would be perfectly suited for interstellar propulsion. To learn more, visit http://www.icarusinterstellar.org

From Grunting To Gabbing: Why Humans Can Talk

2010-08-11T16:38:00.002-05:00

Most of us do it every day without even thinking about it, yet talking is a uniquely human ability. Not only do humans have evolved brains that process and produce language and syntax, but we also can make a range of sounds and tones that we use to form hundreds of thousands of words.

To make these sounds — and talk — humans use the same basic apparatus that chimps have: lungs, throat, voice box, tongue and lips. But we're the ones singing opera and talking on the phone. That is because over thousands of years, humans have evolved a longer throat and smaller mouth better suited for shaping sound.

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Air Force Launches Secretive Space Plane

2010-04-27T08:18:00.002-05:00

The Air Force launched a secretive space plane into orbit Thursday night from Cape Canaveral, Florida. And they’re not sure when it’s returning to Earth.

Perched atop an Atlas V rocket, the Air Force’s unmanned and reusable X-37B made its first flight after a decade in development shrouded in mystery; most of the mission goals remain unknown to the public.

The Air Force has fended off statements calling the X-37B a space weapon, or a space-based drone to be used for spying or delivering weapons from orbit. In a conference call with reporters, deputy undersecretary for the Air Force for space programs Gary Payton acknowledged much of the current mission is classified. But perhaps the most intriguing answer came when he was asked by a reporter wanting to cover the landing as to when the X-37B would be making its way back to the planet.

“In all honesty, we don’t know when it’s coming back for sure,” Payton said.

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NASA and GM Take a Giant Leap Forward in Robotics

2010-04-19T07:11:00.002-05:00

High School Inventors Design for the Future: 2010

2010-04-16T11:51:00.002-05:00

This past weekend, high school students from all over the country gathered at California's NASA Ames Research Center to meet their brilliant peers, present their groundbreaking research -- and chat with interested venture capitalists on the side.

The potential investors hovering in the background are one indication that the Conrad Spirit of Innovation Awards Summit, founded in honor of former astronaut Pete Conrad, isn't your average science fair. Instead of just trophies, winners are presented with grant money they can use to turn their projects into commercial reality (top winners in each category receive $5,000; all finalists receive $1,000 in matching grants).

This year's competition included entries in four different categories: Aerospace, Renewable Energy, Green Building, and Space Nutrition. Here are the grand prize winners.

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Agency hopes to get a flying car airborne by 2015

2010-04-15T08:59:00.003-05:00

DARPA didn't reveal much at first about its "Transformer TX" program aimed at developing a flying car for the military. But now the full proposal has been published, and shows that the Pentagon agency hopes to get a prototype airborne by 2015, The Register reports.

The mad scientists want a vertical-takeoff vehicle that handles like an off-road-capable SUV on the ground, and can cruise like a light single-engine aircraft at altitudes of up to 10,000 feet.

Size limits for the design come to about two nose-to-tail Hummers, The Register calculates. That's roomy enough for four fully-equipped troops, or one stretcher and one medic.

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Chinese Government to Build 215-MPH Bullet Trains in California

2010-04-10T00:01:00.001-05:00

The US has looked to China for help building railroads ever since Chinese laborers laid down the tracks for the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s. Now, California hopes a partnership with the Middle Kingdom can do for 21st Century high-speed rail what that far less pleasant 19th Century "partnership" did for the Transcontinental Railroad. America's most populous state and the world's most populous country have already signed preliminary agreements on the Chinese government building bullet trains on the West Coast, with Governor Schwarzenegger hoping to visit China later this year to further develop the project.

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Let's keep comment as free as possible

2010-04-09T23:57:00.000-05:00

I believe that "unregulated political comment online helps the democratic process" – Lord knows something should be done. Only 13% of the public trust politicians to tell the truth. Seven people in 10 believe the present system of governing Britain needs improvement. The democratic process in this country needs help.

Unregulated political comment online – and everywhere else for that matter – helps the democratic process.

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Obama: Health care bill is a 'first step'

2010-03-31T08:30:00.000-05:00

As difficult as it was, passing the health care bill is only "a critical first step" in overhauling the system so that it "works for all Americans," President Obama told NBC's Today show.

"It is not going to be the only thing," Obama told Matt Lauer. "We are still going to have adjustments that have to be made to further reduce costs."

Continued

Large Hadron Collider – Live!

2010-03-30T08:47:00.003-05:00

The waiting is over. The world's largest, most powerful particle accelerator goes into action this morning. The hunt for new particles, forces and dimensions starts here.

Good morning and welcome to the Guardian's live coverage of the Large Hadron Collider's second launch

Go to live blogging

How robots think: an introduction

2010-03-17T12:32:00.002-05:00

A future full of helpful robots, quietly going about their business and assisting humans in thousands of small ways, is one of technology's most long-deferred promises. Only recently have robots started to achieve the kind of sophistication and ubiquity that computing's pioneers originally envisioned. The military has hundreds of UAVs blanketing the skies above Iraq and Afghanistan, and Roombas are vacuuming living rooms across the country. At the bleeding edge, there's the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2005. This grueling, 140-mile, no-humans-allowed race through the desert showcased full-sized, completely autonomous robot cars that could navigate across rugged desert terrain, avoiding rocks and cliffs and cacti in a race for a $2 million cash prize. The follow-on 2007 Urban Challenge went even further, with the robotic competitors required to drive alongside humans on crowded roads, recognizing and avoiding other cars and following the rules of the road. Suddenly, the robotic future doesn't look so far off.

Much more to read

8 Of The World's Most Popular High-Speed Trains

2010-03-11T09:40:00.002-06:00

The Obama Administration recently allocated money for high-speed train projects across the nation. Here at HuffPost Green, we think high speed rail is totally awesome, and we hope to see many great rail projects across the country. The definition of high-speed rail varies across the world, with the US Federal Railroad Administration defining it as a train that exceeds speeds of 110 mph, while other countries set the standard much higher. Many places in the world are way ahead of us on rail projects, but they certainly give us something to aspire to. Take a look at some of the world's most popular high-speed trains, and let us know which you like best!

See photos!

Precursors of Life-Enabling Molecules in Orion Nebula

2010-03-07T16:23:00.000-06:00

The Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion Nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. The European Space Agency leads the Herschel mission with important participation from NASA.

This detailed-spectrum, obtained with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI) - one of Herschel's three innovative instruments - demonstrates the gold mine of information that Herschel-HIFI will provide on how organic molecules form in space.

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Internet overtakes print in news consumption among Americans

2010-03-03T16:38:00.000-06:00

The Internet has surpassed newspapers as a primary way for Americans to get news, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. That makes the Internet the third most popular news platform overall, with many connected users taking advantage of nontraditional consumption methods such as social media postings, personalized news feeds, and getting their news on-the-go.

National and local TV stations still dominate the news cycle for most Americans, but the Internet now stands third in the list, ahead of national and local newspapers. Additionally, the majority of news consumers say they use two to five websites per day to get their fix—a number we think sounds about right—but a surprisingly high number (21 percent) rely on that one favorite site to get everything they need.

Full piece

Gallery: Robonaut2, NASA's Latest Android Astronaut

2010-02-23T15:25:00.000-06:00

Introducing Robonaut2

NASA

R2 was developed through a Space Act Agreement by NASA and General Motors. It is faster, more dexterous and more technologically advanced than its predecessors and able to use its hands to do work beyond the scope of previously introduced humanoid robots.

See slideshow here

Space Station Astronauts Finally Get Room With a View

2010-02-17T18:31:00.000-06:00

The astronauts of the International Space Station will finally have a room with a view -- a real view of the splendor just outside their ship.

Two spacewalkers from the visiting space shuttle Endeavour, Robert Behnken and Nicholas Patrick, helped install the final large component on the station overnight. It is a 23-foot-long cylindrical chamber called the Tranquility Node -- but of most interest to astronauts, perhaps, is that on its side will be mounted a six-foot-wide windowed dome called the Cupola.

"It looks really good, nice and smooth coming in there," Behnken said as he watched the Tranquility module, steered by the station's robot arm, move from the shuttle's cargo bay to a docking port at one end of the 300-foot-long orbiting complex.

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Laser fusion test results raise energy hopes

2010-01-30T10:02:00.000-06:00

A major hurdle to producing fusion energy using lasers has been swept aside, results in a new report show.

The controlled fusion of atoms - creating conditions like those in our Sun - has long been touted as a possible revolutionary energy source.

However, there have been doubts about the use of powerful lasers for fusion energy because the "plasma" they create could interrupt the fusion.

An article in Science showed the plasma is far less of a problem than expected.

The report is based on the first experiments from the National Ignition Facility (Nif) in the US that used all 192 of its laser beams.

Along the way, the experiments smashed the record for the highest energy from a laser - by a factor of 20.

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Iraq war was illegal, Dutch panel rules

2010-01-29T11:41:00.000-06:00

The war in Iraq had "no basis in international law", a Dutch inquiry found today, in the first ever independent legal assessment of the decision to invade.

In a series of damning findings, a seven-member panel in the Netherlands concluded that the war, which was supported by the Dutch government following intelligence from Britain and the US, had not been justified in law.

"The Dutch government lent its political support to a war whose purpose was not consistent with Dutch government policy," the inquiry in the Hague concluded. "The military action had no sound mandate in international law."

Full Story

Superfast Bullet Trains Are Finally Coming to the U.S.

2010-01-28T09:02:00.001-06:00

Believe it: Bullet trains are coming. After decades of false starts, planners are finally beginning to make headway on what could become the largest, most complicated infrastructure project ever attempted in the US. The Obama administration got on board with an $8 billion infusion, and more cash is likely en route from Congress. It’s enough for Florida and Texas to dust off some previously abandoned plans and for urban clusters in the Northeast and Midwest to pursue some long-overdue upgrades. The nation’s test bed will almost certainly be California, which already has voter-approved funding and planning under way. But getting up to speed requires more than just seed money. For trains to beat planes and automobiles, the hardware needs to really fly. Officials are pushing to deploy state-of-the-art rail rockets. Next stop: the future.

Full piece has history of bullet trains.

Bounties for War Criminals:

2010-01-27T08:11:00.000-06:00

We Should Not 'Move On' from Mass Murder

All those who believe in justice should campaign for their governments to stop messing about and allow the international criminal court to start prosecuting the crime of aggression. We should also press for its adoption into national law. But I believe that the people of this nation, who re-elected a government that had launched an illegal war, have a duty to do more than that. We must show that we have not, as Blair requested, "moved on" from Iraq, that we are not prepared to allow his crime to remain unpunished, or to allow future leaders to believe that they can safely repeat it.

Full piece here

The medical milestones of the noneties

2010-01-06T08:48:00.000-06:00

In 2000, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair jointly announced that a working draft of the human genome had been completed, paving the way for genetic tests and new treatments for cancer, diabetes, heart disease and even obesity.

So a decade on, has it lived up to its promise? And what are the other advances and milestones in medicine that have defined the past ten years?

Sir Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, says the work on the human genome project is beginning to realise some "fantastically important" results.

Read on

Moon hole might be suitable for colony

2010-01-04T15:10:00.000-06:00

CNN) -- Building a home near a moon crater or a lunar sea may sound nice, but moon colonists might have a much better chance of survival if they just lived in a hole.

That's the message sent by an international team of scientists who say they've discovered a protected lunar "lava tube" -- a deep, giant hole -- that might be well suited for a moon colony or a lunar base.

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Name the New Super-Earth

2009-12-21T08:11:00.000-06:00

Astronomers have spotted the most Earth-like planet to date, a massive ocean world that probably has an atmosphere and — though it’s highly unlikely — may support life. And it needs a better name.

Click here to see the names

Chevrolet Volt electric car

2009-12-02T14:49:00.001-06:00

LOS ANGELES — General Motors says the Chevrolet Volt electric car will go on sale late next year in California.

GM said Wednesday at the Los Angeles Auto Show that it will announce other markets later.

The Volt, which is expected to cost around $40,000, can be charged in a conventional outlet and is designed to drive up to 40 miles on electricity. When its lithium-ion battery runs low, an engine kicks in to extend its driving range to more than 300 miles without refueling.

Story

Franklin Chang Diaz has great aspirations for his rocket

2009-11-21T17:37:00.000-06:00

LIBERIA, Costa Rica — Franklin Chang Diaz has great aspirations for his rocket: a mail-carrier for outer space, a garbage truck for orbital debris and, the ultimate goal, a shuttle to Mars.

The Costa Rica-born physicist speaks nonchalantly about the day humankind will have moved entirely to outer space, while our precious Earth becomes “a protected park.”

“Our great grandchildren will always be able to come back [to Earth] from wherever they happen to live and see where their ancestors and culture came from,” said the former NASA astronaut who is now president and CEO of the Ad Astra Rocket Company.

Full Story Here

Large Hadron Collider: Quick Restart Of World's Largest Atom Smasher Stuns Scientists

2009-11-21T17:34:00.000-06:00

GENEVA — Scientists are preparing the world's largest atom smasher to explore the depths of matter after successfully restarting the $10 billion machine following more than a year of repairs.

When the machine is fully operational, its magnets will control the beams of protons and send them in opposite directions through two parallel tubes the size of fire hoses.

In rooms as large as cathedrals 300 feet (100 meters) under the Swiss-French border, the magnets will force them into huge detectors to record the reactions.

One goal is to unravel the mysteries of the Big Bang that many scientists theorize marked the creation of the universe billions of years ago. More here.

The sci-fi legends who shaped today's tech

2009-11-21T16:54:00.000-06:00

Science fiction has long inspired real-world technology, but have the authors of sci-fi stories finally run out of steam? Stuart Andrews investigates

From the earliest days of Jules Verne and HG Wells, science fiction and technology have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship. Sci-fi stories and novels expressed man’s desire to conquer space, find new worlds or explore the ocean depths, and while man would probably have landed on the moon or launched deep-sea expeditions without them, these tales inspired those who made such giant leaps.

In turn, real-world technology has inspired the science-fiction writer. After all, it’s science fiction that charts what happens when humanity meets high technology, asking what will happen, where it will take us, and what we’ll find when we get there. This is as true of computer technology as it was of the space race. Perhaps, even more so.

Read more.

Oldest "Human" Skeleton Found--Disproves "Missing Link"

2009-10-01T10:47:00.000-05:00

Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago (interactive time line: how the new discovery changes human evolutionary theory).

Original Story

DENNIS KUCINICH CALLS FOR IMPEACHMENT

2007-11-26T11:09:00.001-06:00

Evidence for a parallel universe?

2007-11-26T11:04:00.000-06:00

Last August, astronomers working on the analysis of data being acquired by NASA’s WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) satellite announced that they found a huge void in the universe. A void is a region of space that has much less material (stars, nebulae, dust and other material) than the average. Since our universe is relatively heterogeneous, empty spaces are not rare, but in this case the enormous magnitude of the hole is way outside the expected range. The hole found in the constellation of Eridanus is about a billion light years across, which is roughly 10,000 times as large as our galaxy or 400 times the distance to Andromeda, the closest “large” galaxy.
The dimension of the hole is so big that at first glance, it results impossible to explain under the current cosmological theories, although scientists put forward some explanations based on certain theoretical models that might predict the existence of “giant knots” in space known as topological defects.
However, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill physics Professor Laura Mersini-Houghton made a staggering claim. She says, “Standard cosmology cannot explain such a giant cosmic hole” and goes further with the ground-breaking hypothesis that the huge void is “… the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own“.

Source

Latest Sunscreens

2007-06-04T13:26:00.000-05:00

All the buzz this year is about new ways to block wrinkle-causing UVA rays.

Last summer, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new compound called ecamsule for use in sunscreens sold in this country. Ecamsule, an organic filter that protects against UVA rays, has been included in sunscreens sold in Canada and Europe since 1993 under the name of Mexoryl SX.

Right now, the only over-the-counter product sold in the United States that uses ecamsule is L'Oreal's Anthelios SX. The sunscreen, which has an SPF of 15, also contains two other protective ingredients, avobenzone and octocrylene. Researchers say ecamsule offers longer protection and is better at absorbing UVA rays than anything else available. Anthelios SX is available at www.anthelios.com. A 3.4-ounce tube of the daily moisturizing cream sells for $29.

Another ingredient to watch for is Helioplex, a Neutrogena-patented stabilized form of avobenzone (Parsol1789), the most widely used ingredient for blocking UVA rays. Helioplex breaks down slower than regular avobenzone so it offers longer protection. Neutrogena patented Helioplex for use in many of its sun-protection products, but says the most popular is its new Fresh Cooling Sunblock Gel, which protects with SPF 30 against a broad spectrum of UVA and UVB rays. It is available at Target and other stores for $8.99.

Can Capitalism Be Green?

2007-05-14T22:24:00.000-05:00

TORONTO - Capitalism has proven to be environmentally and socially unsustainable, so future prosperity will have to come from a new economic model, say some experts. What this new model would look like is the subject of intense debate.

One current theory states that continuous growth can be environmentally compatible if clean and efficient technologies are adopted, and if economies leave behind production of material goods and move towards services. This is known as sustainable prosperity.

International agreements to fight global problems, like the thinning of the atmosphere’s ozone layer and climate change, have used market principles to achieve compliance by the private sector.

But the problem is, “we are consuming 25 percent more than the Earth can give us each year,” says William Rees, of the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia.

Rees and other experts have calculated that annual human consumption of natural resources exceeds the planet’s ecological capacity to regenerate them by 25 percent, a proportion that has been growing since 1984, the first year they calculate that humanity crossed that capacity threshold.

more...

Will be back soon...

2007-05-14T22:21:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long hiatus, the blog will be back with new posts soon.

Is American Capitalism on Its Way Out?

2007-01-15T19:09:00.000-06:00

A little over a decade ago, the American model of capitalism was triumphant. The Soviet Union had recently collapsed, recession took the shine off the vaunted Japanese model of the 1980's, the social-democratic models of northern and Western Europe languished in high unemployment and low growth, and the so-called East Asian miracle was soon to be engulfed in a financial crisis.

For the many developing and transition economies in search of a model, there was only one prescription: Liberalize, privatize and copy the Anglo- American institutions of legal, financial and corporate governance.

Today there is less certainty. The technology and housing booms in the United States have subsided. High American living on borrowed Asian money is now widely considered unsustainable; extreme income concentration at the very top with stagnation at the bottom has made the hollowness of the productivity growth particularly palpable for most working people.

Unemployment in the United States and Britain has generally been lower than in much of Europe, but crises looms in health insurance and social security.

Meanwhile, the social-democratic and Japanese models, after some necessary repair, have come alive. Their economies have revived while still keeping most of their distinctive institutional features, including a continuing emphasis on social protection and on a more coordinated style of corporate governance.

There is an increased appreciation of the fact that countries have different political contexts and the bargaining powers of the different stakeholders in the economic system — owners, managers and workers — vary.

For developing countries, the East Asian model has not lost its influence. The model is characterized by relative equality at first, followed by land reform and mass expansion of education, which helps smooth the wrenching conflicts and readjustments of early industrialization.

In addition, state coordination of private enterprise strengthens rather than stifles the market processes. The phenomenal growth of capitalism in China under pervasive government control has only added to the attraction of the basic East Asian model.

India, another high-growth country, has also not quite followed the economic orthodoxy in a systematic manner, particularly in matters of privatization, deregulation and fiscal deficit management.

In the 2006 "index of economic freedom" compiled by the Heritage Foundation, China and India rank far below most Latin American and many African countries. Yet the economic performance of the latter countries, which did follow the liberalizing and privatizing reforms of the Anglo-American model more faithfully during the last two decades, has been, with a few exceptions, disappointing.

Capitalism in both rich and poor countries has been afflicted by problems of rising inequality and environmental degradation. Globalization has increased anxiety everywhere about job security. This underlines the value of social safety nets in coping with adjustments to market competition.

We need to explore the many ways in which equity can be enhanced without giving up on efficiency. These include expansion of facilities of education, training and health care. In many poor countries the barriers faced by large numbers of people in credit markets sharply reduces the society's potential for productive investment, innovation and human-resource development.

Protest is not enough. It is necessary to explore viable and sustainable ways of constructing alternatives to capitalism.

On the other side, it is important to stress that single-minded pursuits of efficiency are bound to be counterproductive. In particular, a standardized policy prescription that ignores social and institutional diversities or the complexities of a particular society is a recipe for failure.

The accumulated resentment of the large numbers of losers worldwide in the process of globalization is already in danger of triggering a substantial backlash in many countries. The advocates of capitalism should try to protect it from the enthusiasts for any one particular variety of capitalism.

Source IHT

iPhone introduced by Steve Jobs

2007-01-09T17:58:00.000-06:00

Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs on Tuesday announced the iPod maker's long-awaited leap into the mobile phone business and renamed the company just "Apple Inc.," reflecting its increased focus on consumer electronics.

The iPhone, which will start at $499 when it launches in June, is controlled by touch, plays music, surfs the Internet and runs the Macintosh computer operating system. Jobs said it will "reinvent" wireless communications and "leapfrog" past the current generation of smart phones.

"Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything," he said during his keynote address at the annual Macworld Conference and Expo. "It's very fortunate if you can work on just one of these in your career. ... Apple's been very fortunate in that it's introduced a few of these."

He said the company's name change is meant to reflect Apple's transformation from a computer manufacturer to a full-fledged consumer electronics company.

Full article

Gates says day of the home-help robot is near

2007-01-04T23:14:00.000-06:00

An office worker checks her home-gadget webpage from her work computer. The tasks she set for her home robots in the morning have all been completed: washing and ironing, vacuuming the lounge and mowing the lawn.

She orders dinner from the kitchen chefbot - sushi today, using a recipe from a Japanese website - then checks her elderly mother's house. The companionbot has given mum her medicine and helped her out of bed and into a chair.

Read more

Craigslist thumbs nose at Wall Street

2006-12-12T22:08:00.000-06:00

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- True-believers might argue that a capitalist's pursuit of maximized profit is, by its nature, a noble one, and likely to create benefits for the greater social good.

Unfortunately, today, the pursuits of personal, financial rewards and broader, societal betterment are too often mutually exclusive.
The reason, perhaps, is that man is inclined to pursue money -- subconsciously or not -- rather than what is virtuous and just.

That's why the decision by Craig Newmark, Craigslist founder and ace customer service representative, and the San Francisco classified company's president, Jim Buckmaster, to focus less on profit maximization and more on serving their customers is so incredibly refreshing.

Their noble stance gives entrepreneurs from San Francisco a great name. Despite the many unfortunate examples of greed, Internet entrepreneurs aren't all about getting rich quick and cashing out. At an entrepreneur's roots is a vision to provide a service that helps alleviate a pain point. The money thing always muddied the waters down the road.

The attitude at Craigslist is a nice reminder of how entrepreneurs' ideals can still remain intact, no matter how odd they may seem in a world that worships money.

Read Full Article

Richest tenth own 85% of world's assets

2006-12-05T23:53:00.000-06:00

Comment: What an outrage!

The richest 2 per cent of adults own more than half the world’s wealth, according to the most comprehensive study of personal assets.

Among the largest economies, Britain boasted the third-highest average wealth of $126,832 (£64,172) per adult, after the United States and Japan, a United Nations development research institute found.

Those with assets of $500,000 could consider themselves to be among the richest 1 per cent in the world. Those with net assets of $2,200 per adult were in the top half of the wealth distribution.

Although global income was distributed unequally, the spread of wealth was more skewed, according to the study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the UN University.

“Wealth is heavily concentrated in North America, Europe and high-income AsiaPacific countries. People in these countries collectively hold almost 90 per cent of total world wealth,” the report said.

Researchers defined wealth as the value of physical and financial assets minus debts.

The richest 10 per cent of adults accounted for 85 per cent of assets. The bottom 50 per cent of the world’s adults owned barely 1 per cent of global wealth.

Continued......

A wind-powered skyscraper in Paris

2006-11-28T20:53:00.000-06:00

PARIS — Developers have selected a design by an award-winning American architect for a bold new building nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower — and powered partly by the wind.

Dubbed the Lighthouse, the 984-foot-high skyscraper will be designed by Pritzker Prize winner Thom Mayne and erected at La Defense, a complex of office towers in a business district west of Paris where many of France’s major corporations are headquartered.

The Unibail development company announced Monday that Mayne, who works for Santa Monica, Calif.-based firm Morphosis, had bested nine other architects to win the bid. His design shows a building curving asymmetrically upward, topped by a crown of spiky antennae.

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Neanderthal DNA secrets unlocked

2006-11-15T21:44:00.000-06:00

A genetic breakthrough could help clear up some long-standing mysteries surrounding our closest evolutionary relatives: the Neanderthals.

Scientists have reconstructed a chunk of DNA from the genome of a Neanderthal man who lived 38,000 years ago.

Full article

Vermont poised to elect America's first socialist senator

2006-11-03T18:26:00.000-06:00

Amid the furious debate over Iraq and the speculation that George Bush may be a lame duck after next Tuesday's mid-term elections, an extraordinary political milestone is approaching: a cantankerous 65-year-old called Bernie looks set to become the first socialist senator in US history.

Bernie Sanders is so far ahead in the contest for Vermont's vacant seat for the US Senate that it seems only sudden illness or accident could derail his rendezvous with destiny, after eight terms as the state's only congressman. His success flies in the face of all the conventional wisdom about American politics.

He is an unapologetic socialist and proud of it. Even his admirers admit that he lacks social skills, and he tends to speak in tirades. Yet that has not stopped him winning eight consecutive elections to the US House of Representatives.

"Twenty years ago when people here thought about socialism they were thinking about the Soviet Union, about Albania," Mr Sanders told the Guardian in a telephone interview from the campaign trail. "Now they think about Scandinavia. In Vermont people understand I'm talking about democratic socialism."

Democratic socialism, however, has hardly proved to be a vote-winning formula in a country where even the word "liberal" is generally treated as an insult. Until now the best showing in a Senate race by a socialist of any stripe was in 1930 by Emil Seidel, who won 6% of the vote.

John McLaughry, the head of a free-market Vermont thinktank, the Ethan Allen Institute, said Mr Sanders is a throwback to that era. "Bernie Sanders is an unreconstructed 1930s socialist and proud of it. He's a skilful demagogue who casts every issue in that framework, a master practitioner of class warfare."

When Mr Sanders, a penniless but eloquent import from New York, got himself elected mayor of Burlington in 1981, at the height of the cold war, it rang some alarm bells. "I had to persuade the air force base across the lake that Bernie's rise didn't mean there was a communist takeover of Burlington," recalled Garrison Nelson, a politics professor at the University of Vermont who has known him since the 1970s.

"He used to sleep on the couch of a friend of mine, walking about town with no work," Prof Nelson said. "Bernie really is a subject for political anthropology. He has no political party. He has never been called charming. He has no money, and none of the resources we normally associate with success. However, he learned how to speak to a significant part of the disaffected population of Vermont."

Mr Sanders turned out to be a success as mayor, rejuvenating the city government and rehabilitating Burlington's depressed waterfront on Lake Champlain while ensuring that it was not gentrified beyond the reach of ordinary local people. "He stood this town on its ear," said Peter Freyne, a local journalist.

"I tried to make the government work for working people, and not just for corporations, and on that basis I was elected to Congress," Mr Sanders said. He has served 16 years in the House of Representatives, a lonely voice since the Republican takeover in 1994. He has however struck some interesting cross-party deals, siding with libertarian Republicans to oppose a clause in the Patriot Act which allowed the FBI to find out what books Americans borrowed from libraries.

He says his consistent electoral success reflects the widespread discontent with rising inequality, deepening poverty and dwindling access to affordable healthcare in the US. "People realise there is a lot to be learned from the democratic socialist models in northern Europe," Mr Sanders said. "The untold story here is the degree to which the middle class is shrinking and the gap between rich and poor is widening. It is a disgrace that the US has the highest rate of childhood poverty of any industrialised country on earth. Iraq is important, but it's not the only issue."

In a state of just over 600,000 people he also has a significant advantage over his Republican opponent, Rich Tarrant, a businessman who has spent about $7m on his campaign. "Sanders is popular because even if you disagree with him you know where he stands," said Eric Davis, a political scientist at Vermont's Middlebury College. "He pays attention to his political base. He's independent and iconoclastic and Vermonters like that."

Source

No more seafood by 2050?

2006-11-02T20:12:00.000-06:00

There may be no more commercial fish stocks left in the sea by 2050, according to a new study cataloguing the global collapse of marine ecosystems.

It blames not just over-fishing, but also mankind’s wider attack on the health of ocean ecosystems, for instance from pollution. “Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the ocean species together, as working eco-systems, then this century is the last century of wild food,” says Steve Palumbi at Stanford University in California, US, who carried out the four-year investigation with colleagues.

The study is the biggest and most all-embracing effort yet to understand the productivity of the oceans and predict their future. Uniquely, it combines historical data on fish catches, some of it going back a thousand years, with analysis of marine ecosystems and experiments to bring marine life back to protected areas.

The authors, from five countries, reviewed hundreds of individual studies covering every scale from whole oceans to marine plots of a few square metres. They say the same pattern emerges at every scale. Rich ecosystems with many species can survive over-fishing and other threats well – but once biodiversity is lost, the entire system, including fish stocks, goes into exponential decline.

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Human like Androids in Japan

2006-11-01T22:12:00.000-06:00

Androids which are remarkably like humans, and come complete with silicone 'skin', have been on display in Japan.

The robots are fitted with a supply of compressed air so that they even appear to breathe. Samantha Smith reports.

Full story here.

2006-10-29T20:07:00.000-06:00

Photo gallery: Amazing shots from Hubble's 16-year mission.

Hackers Zero In on Online Stock Accounts

2006-10-24T22:47:00.000-05:00

Hackers have been breaking into customer accounts at large online brokerages in the United States and making unauthorized trades worth millions of dollars as part of a fast-growing new form of online fraud under investigation by federal authorities.

E-Trade Financial Corp., the nation's fourth-largest online broker, said last week that "concerted rings" in Eastern Europe and Thailand caused their customers $18 million in losses in the third quarter alone.

Continue...

IE7 unleashed

2006-10-20T00:01:00.000-05:00

Microsoft's much-anticipated IE7 browser is finally available for download, 18 months after Bill Gates announced plans to deliver Redmond's first major upgrade to its browser software since the release of IE6 in August 2001.

Key enhancements to IE 7 over IE 6 include anti-phishing features and improved ActiveX controls among several security improvements. The browser also promises enhancements to support web standards (such as HTML 4.01/CSS 2), the long-awaited introduction of tabbed browsing, and an integrated RSS feed reader. Many of these features are already included in Opera, and improved anti-phishing features will debut with the imminent (if delayed) arrival of Firefox 2.0, so to some extent market-leader Microsoft could be described as playing catch-up with its smaller rivals.

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Red Planet Double Team

2006-10-09T17:38:00.000-05:00

NASA’s newest Mars orbiter has spied the plucky rover Opportunity perched at the rim of the red planet’s massive Victoria Crater as both vehicles explore the fourth planet from the Sun.

Appearing almost as a shiny boulder, Opportunity’s lumpy outline and its camera mast shadow can easily be seen in a high-resolution image of Victoria Crater taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and released by the space agency on Friday.

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The American Economy Dethroned By the Swiss ...

2006-10-01T18:22:00.000-05:00

Switzerland was the most competitive country in the world in 2006, according to the yearly rankings published by the World Economic Forum . Yesterday, the people responsible for the rankings said the Confederation's public institutions and scientific research programs were the best in the world.

Our Swiss neighbors, who were number four last year, have thus managed to nose out the usual champions, Finland and Denmark, with the United States now dropping to number six in the rankings, two thirds of which are based on the results of a survey carried out of 11.000 of the planet's business executives.

"Switzerland has a well developed infrastructure in terms of scientific research," says Augusto Lopez-Claros, the chief author of this Global Competitiveness Report . "Good institutions and competent macroeconomic management, coupled with world-class educational attainment and a focus on technology and innovation, are a successful strategy for boosting competitiveness in an increasingly complex global economy," he added.

In addition to its infrastructure, Switzerland received good grades on its institutional framework, characterized by a "respect for the rule of law, an efficiently working judicial system, and high levels of transparency and accountability within public institutions." In this domain, the United States, very well noted for its technological innovation, has been outdone again this year: it has dropped five places in rankings because of the increasing mistrust on the part of economists of the burgeoning deficits and debt of the country. Washington is therefore number 69 of 125 in terms of "macroeconomic environment."

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Did Americans Build First Plane ... or was it a Brazilian?

2006-09-27T08:08:00.000-05:00

[Editor's Note: According to the Brazilians, no one saw the flight of the Wright Brother's first flight, The Flyer, in 1903, and the flight in 1905 was not officially ratified. But the 1906 flight by Santos Dumont in his 14 BIS in Paris was ratified and registered].

Independently of who flew first and which flight proved more, the fact is that Santos-Dumont's Demoiselle surpassed all other in popularity and innovation as soon as it appeared. With his extraordinary capacity to understand the significance of these new aeronautical concepts, the Brazilian inventor executed great technological leaps in a very small number of steps, enormously speeding the evolution of aviation in its early years.

And unlike the Wright Brothers, Santos-Dumont made it a point not to patent his inventions. He freely distributed the blueprints for the Demoiselle to anyone who requested them. They were published in 1910 by the American magazine "Popular Mechanics" and made the tiny "dragonfly" the most popular plane in the United States and Europe. "The first airplane factory was for the Demoiselle," said Botelho.

And despite the long-standing dispute, the two aeronautical traditions will fly together, side by side, in the demonstration in Dayton, showing the world that there is room in the world for more than one father of aviation.

Read article here.

NASA's Orion Capsule Will Fly in Seven Years

2006-09-03T21:34:00.000-05:00

NASA has announced that Lockheed Martin will build America's new space capsule, called Orion. Expected to orbit Earth by 2014, Orion is expected to reach the moon by 2020. Although the capsule design has not been deemed to be especially exciting, unlike earlier capsules, Orion will be reusable. Melissa Block talks with U.S. Air Force Chief Scientist Mark Lewis about the spacecraft.

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Europe's first lunar mission reaches moon

2006-09-03T21:25:00.000-05:00

BERLIN (AP) — Europe's first spacecraft to the moon ended its three-year mission Sunday by crashing into the lunar surface in a volcanic plane called the Lake of Excellence, to a round of applause in the mission control room in Germany.

Hitting at 1 1/4 miles per second, the impact of the SMART-1 spacecraft was expected to leave a 3-yard-by-10-yard crater and send dust miles above the surface. Observatories watched the event from Earth and scientists hoped the cloud of dust and debris would provide clues to the geologic composition of the site.

"That's it — we are in the Lake of Excellence," said spacecraft operations chief Octavio Camino as applause broke out in mission control in Darmstadt, Germany. "We have landed."

Read more...

A Vote to Quit the Electoral College

2006-08-31T09:13:00.000-05:00

SACRAMENTO — Lawmakers sent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill Wednesday that would make California the first state to jump aboard a national movement to elect the president by popular vote.

Under the legislation, California would grant its electoral votes to the nominee who gets the most votes nationwide — not the most votes in California. Get enough other states to do the same, backers of the bill say, and soon presidential candidates will have to campaign across the nation, not just in a few key "battleground" states such as Ohio and Michigan that can sway the Electoral College vote.

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Pluto loses status as a planet

2006-08-24T09:48:00.000-05:00

Astronomers meeting in the Czech capital have voted to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.

About 2,500 experts were in Prague for the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) general assembly.

Astronomers rejected a proposal that would have retained Pluto as a planet and brought three other objects into the cosmic club.

Pluto has been considered a planet since its discovery in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh.

The ninth planet will now effectively be airbrushed out of school and university textbooks.

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The New Solar System

2006-08-23T19:42:00.000-05:00

A controversial new proposal by the International Astronomical Union would reclassify an asteroid and a moon as planets, plus add one far-out object. Here's the whole mix. Continue to see each of the 12 "planets." Click to enlarge.

Scientists flock to test 'free energy' discovery

2006-08-20T11:52:00.000-05:00

A man who claims to have developed a free energy technology which could power everything from mobile phones to cars has received more than 400 applications from scientists to test it.

Sean McCarthy says that no one was more sceptical than he when Steorn, his small hi-tech firm in Dublin, hit upon a way of generating clean, free and constant energy from the interaction of magnetic fields. 'It wasn't so much a Eureka moment as a get-back-in-there-and-check-your-instruments moment, although in far more colourful language,' said McCarthy. But when he attempted to share his findings, he says, scientists either put the phone down on him or refused to endorse him publicly in case they damaged their academic reputations. So last week he took out a full-page advert in the Economist magazine, challenging the scientific community to examine his technology.

McCarthy claims it provides five times the amount of energy a mobile phone battery generates for the same size, and does not have to be recharged. Within 36 hours of his advert appearing he had been contacted by 420 scientists in Europe, America and Australia, and a further 4,606 people had registered to receive the results.

See

PC celebrates 25th anniversary

2006-08-13T10:01:00.000-05:00

IT was no more powerful than a modern calculator, but the arrival of the original IBM personal computer 25 years ago was an epoch-making event in the evolution of modern life.

The PC has redefined modern life – from the way people work to the way they look for love, chat with friends and even shop.

The IBM 5150 PC was released on August 12, 1981, the product of a year's feverish development by a close-knit team of computer engineers working in Florida.

"Designed for business, school and home, the easy-to-use system sells for as little as $US1565," IBM's original press statement said back then.

That price is worth more than $US4000 ($5000) in today's money. But if you wanted colour graphics, two floppy disk drives and a printer, it would set you back triple the amount of the base model.

The PC weighed 11.5kg with one floppy disk drive fitted, over a third more than a present-day computer. The keyboard alone weighed 2.7 kg.

At 16 kilobytes, its memory was 50,000 times less powerful than modern PCs.

It offered VisiCalc, a breakthrough spreadsheet program, and EasyWriter, which IBM promised "will store letters, manuscripts and other text for editing or rapid reproduction on the printer".

And there was Microsoft Adventure, which "brings players into a fantasy world of caves and treasures".

second half of piece

Also see The 25 Greatest PCs of All Time.

After 10 Years, Few Believe Life on Mars: NASA Struggling

2006-08-07T23:01:00.000-05:00

It was a science fiction fantasy come true: Ten years ago this summer, NASA announced the discovery of life on Mars.

At a Washington, D.C., news conference, scientists showed magnified pictures of a four-pound Martian meteorite riddled with wormy blobs that looked like bacterial colonies. The researchers explained how they had pried numerous clues from the rock, all strongly supporting their contention that microscopic creatures once occupied its nooks and crannies.

It was arguably the space agency's most imagination-gripping moment since Apollo. Space buffs and NASA officials said that it just might be the scientific discovery of the century.

Read on...

Scientists Say They’ve Found a Code Beyond Genetics in DNA

2006-07-25T09:43:00.000-05:00

Researchers believe they have found a second code in DNA in addition to the genetic code.

Loren Williams/Chemistry and Biochemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology

In a living cell, the DNA double helix wraps around a nucleosome, above center, and binds to some of its proteins, known as histones.

The genetic code specifies all the proteins that a cell makes. The second code, superimposed on the first, sets the placement of the nucleosomes, miniature protein spools around which the DNA is looped. The spools both protect and control access to the DNA itself.

The discovery, if confirmed, could open new insights into the higher order control of the genes, like the critical but still mysterious process by which each type of human cell is allowed to activate the genes it needs but cannot access the genes used by other types of cell.

...

China to test its 'artificial sun'

2006-07-25T09:41:00.000-05:00

BEIJING, July 24 (UPI) -- The first plasma discharge from China's experimental advanced superconducting research center -- the so-called "artificial sun" -- is set to occur next month.

The discharge, expected about Aug. 15, will be conducted at Science Island in Hefei, in east China's Anhui Province, the Peoples Daily reported Monday.

Scientists told the newspaper a successful test will mean the world's first nuclear fusion device of its kind will be ready to go into actual operation, the newspaper said.

The plasma discharge will draw international attention since some scientists are concerned with risks involved in such a process. But Chinese researchers involved in the project say any radiation will cease once the test is completed.

The experiment will take place in a structure made of reinforced concrete, with five-foot-thick walls and a three-foot-thick roof.

Source

Chinese Cars Gain Foothold in Venezuela

2006-07-25T09:39:00.000-05:00

CARACAS, Venezuela — Chinese automobile manufacturers are seeking a share of Venezuela's car market, which has grown with the help of an oil-fueled consumption boom.

President Hugo Chavez has long been trying to foster greater economic ties with the Asian giant. On top of greater energy and mining sector cooperation, Chavez has also pursued Chinese development of a computer assembly line in the Andean nation.

Two Chinese car dealers have recently set up showrooms across Venezuela to try to compete with more established brands.

Great Wall Motors, China's largest car maker, is offering large utility vehicles.

cont.

Linux-powered robots from France? Oui!

2006-07-21T06:46:00.000-05:00

A French start-up created to build autonomous, easily programmable, affordable humanoid robots has emerged from stealth mode. Aldebaran Robotics, of Paris, expects to ship its first product -- a humanoid household service robot running Linux -- in early 2007.

Aldebaran says its "Nao" household robot will compete with robotic research prototypes in terms of functionality. The walking, talking, WiFi-enabled bot will stand 21.6 inches tall, and will feature 23 "degrees of freedom" of motion -- three more than the 14-inch tall "Choromet" android announced earlier this week by four Japanese companies. Nao's extra degrees of freedom appear to come in the form of gripping hands.

See article

Study of human brain yields intelligent robots

2006-07-18T09:38:00.000-05:00

Robot cars drive themselves across the desert, electronic eyes perform lifeguard duty in swimming pools and virtual enemies with human-like behavior battle video game players.

These are some of the fruits of the research field known as artificial intelligence. A half-century after the term was coined, both scientists and engineers say they are making rapid progress in simulating the human brain, and their work is finding its way into a new wave of real-world products.

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Spacecraft carrying commercial space station launches

2006-07-12T17:47:00.000-05:00

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A Russian rocket blasted off Wednesday carrying an experimental inflatable spacecraft for an American entrepreneur who dreams of some day building a commercial space station, officials said.

The Genesis I spacecraft lifted off from the southern Ural Mountains at 6:53 p.m. Moscow time aboard a converted Cold War ballistic missile, according to the Russian Strategic Missile Forces.

It reached its designated orbit about 320 miles above Earth minutes after liftoff.

The launch was a first for Bigelow Aerospace, founded by Las Vegas real estate mogul Robert Bigelow, who owns the Budget Suites of America hotel chain.

Bigelow envisions building a private orbiting space complex by 2015 that would be made up of several expandable Genesis-like modules linked together and could be used as a hotel, or perhaps a science lab or college. He has committed $500 million toward the project.

cont.

U.S. minorities are becoming the majority

2006-07-08T10:09:00.000-05:00

By Robert Pear The New York Times

WASHINGTON The United States as a whole is moving in the direction of its two most populous states, California and Texas, where members of racial and ethnic minorities account for more than half the population, according to the Census Bureau.

Non-Hispanic whites now make up two-thirds of the total U.S. population, the bureau said, but that proportion will dip to one-half by 2050, according to the agency's latest projections.

In a new report, estimating population levels as of July 1, 2004, the Census Bureau said Texas had a minority population of 11.3 million, accounting for 50.2 percent of its total population of 22.5 million. Texas is the fourth state in which minority groups, taken together, account for a majority of the population. But no one racial or ethnic group by itself accounts for a majority of the total population there.

Steven Murdock, the state demographer for Texas, said, "In some sense, Texas is a preview of what the nation will become in the long run."

Full article

Discovery flips out before docking with space station

2006-07-06T18:22:00.000-05:00

CAPE CANAVERAL — With smiles all around, the seven astronauts of the space shuttle Discovery entered the international space station Thursday, with one of them planning to stay behind when the shuttle returns to Earth in 10 days. Flight director Tony Ceccacci called the rendezvous perfect.

"We achieved one of our, of course, major goals of this flight," he said.

The two men aboard the space station snapped 350 photos of the approaching shuttle to document any damage to the thermal skin, Ceccacci said. There was no immediate word on whether any problems were noted in the 125 pictures beamed to Mission Control as of early afternoon.

Even though the mission was going smoothly, the control center had not returned to a sense of normalcy, Ceccacci said. "It's more of a sense of, 'Hey, the things we've done to make the ... tank better are working,'" he said.

The European Space Agency's Thomas Reiter of Germany brings the space station to a three-member crew for the first time in three years. Reiter, who will stay for six months, is the first European to live on the space station.

After hatches opened at 12:30 p.m. ET, the shuttle crew was greeted by American astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov. The astronaut reunion occurred about 100 minutes after the station and shuttle docked in a delicate dance at 17,500 miles per hour, about 220 miles above Earth.

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Tourism Update: Jeff Bezos’ Spaceship Plans Revealed

2006-07-05T23:41:00.000-05:00

The public space travel business is picking up suborbital speed thanks to a variety of private rocket groups and their dream machines.

Joining the mix is Blue Origin's New Shepard Reusable Launch System. It is financially fueled by an outflow of dollars from the deep pockets of billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com.

The Bezos-backed Blue Origin, LLC commercial space outfit has recently turned in a draft environmental assessment (EA) for their West Texas launch site to the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) in Washington, D.C.

The document is the best glimpse yet of what Blue Origin is scoping out to develop "safe, inexpensive and reliable human access to space."

Privately-owned property...

Via Web, talk gets a lot cheaper

2006-07-04T08:57:00.000-05:00

Competition in the phone business, intensifying this year as Internet-based calling has taken root, has reached the point where many industry experts are expecting an era of remarkably cheap and even free calls.

That era would be built on a vast migration of phone service from traditional networks to the Internet, where the calls become just another way to use Internet connections that consumers are paying for anyway.

"People are going to look at voice communications as something they expect to get for free," said Henry Gomez, general manager of Skype, which eBay bought last year for $2.6 billion. The company usually charges a few cents a minute for calls from computers to regular phones, but in May it scrapped those fees through the end of the year for users in the United States and Canada.

New competitors, including the major cable companies and start-ups like Vonage and SunRocket, are putting intense pressure on traditional phone companies like AT&T and Verizon that have built multibillion-dollar empires by selling phone service over copper wires. On the defensive, AT&T and Verizon are discounting heavily and pushing customers toward packages of more advanced services.

Online services like Skype that offer free calls from computer to computer for users with headset have attracted the tech-savvy and are trying to push into the mainstream. In the process, they are dragging down everyone else's prices and pointing the way toward a time when it will be harder for companies to charge anything for a basic home phone line on its own.

Continue reading

Britons see US as vulgar empire builder

2006-07-03T20:40:00.000-05:00

By Ben Fenton
(Filed: 03/07/2006)

Britons have never had such a low opinion of the leadership of the United States, a YouGov poll shows.

As Americans prepare to celebrate the 230th anniversary of their independence tomorrow, the poll found that only 12 per cent of Britons trust them to act wisely on the global stage. This is half the number who had faith in the Vietnam-scarred White House of 1975.

Most Britons see America as a cruel, vulgar, arrogant society, riven by class and racism, crime-ridden, obsessed with money and led by an incompetent hypocrite.

More at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news

No sex please, robot, just clean the floor

2006-06-19T20:46:00.000-05:00

THE race is on to keep humans one step ahead of robots: an international team of scientists and academics is to publish a “code of ethics” for machines as they become more and more sophisticated.

Although the nightmare vision of a Terminator world controlled by machines may seem fanciful, scientists believe the boundaries for human-robot interaction must be set now — before super-intelligent robots develop beyond our control.

“There are two levels of priority,” said Gianmarco Verruggio, a roboticist at the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation in Genoa, northern Italy, and chief architect of the guide, to be published next month. “We have to manage the ethics of the scientists making the robots and the artificial ethics inside the robots.”

Verruggio and his colleagues have identified key areas that include: ensuring human control of robots; preventing illegal use; protecting data acquired by robots; and establishing clear identification and traceability of the machines.

Full article

Hawking says space colonies needed

2006-06-13T22:13:00.000-05:00

By SYLVIA HUI, Associated Press Writer Tue Jun 13, 1:42 PM ET

HONG KONG - The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy the Earth, world-renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said Tuesday.

Humans could have a permanent base on the moon in 20 years and a colony on Mars in the next 40 years, the British scientist told a news conference.

"We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system," added Hawking, who arrived in Hong Kong to a rock star's welcome Monday. Tickets for his lecture planned for Wednesday were sold out.

He added that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth.

"It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."

The 64-year-old scientist — author of the global best seller "A Brief History of Time" — is wheelchair-bound and communicates with the help of a computer because he suffers from a neurological disorder called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

Hawking said he's teaming up with his daughter to write a children's book about the universe, aimed at the same age group as the Harry Potter books.

"It is a story for children, which explains the wonders of the universe," said his daughter, Lucy, a journalist and novelist. They didn't provide other details.

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Is being a good dad ruining your career?

2006-06-11T09:50:00.000-05:00

Fifteen years after women first tried to have it all, men now want the same. But is it possible both to impress the boss and be an attentive father? New dad Rafael Behr on the struggle to juggle career with fatherhood

Sunday June 11, 2006
The Observer

Read on...

Vista Beta 2, up close and personal

2006-05-25T17:09:00.000-05:00

Up in Redmond, Microsoft developers proudly talk of dogfooding the software they write. Running beta software is the only way to learn what works and what doesn’t. A copy of Windows Vista running on a test machine in the corner isn’t likely to get a serious workout. To find the pain points – another popular Microsoft expression – you have to run that beta code on the machine you use every day.

In that same spirit, I’ve spent the last three months running beta versions of Windows Vista on the PCs I use for everyday work. February and March were exasperating. April’s release was noticeably better, and the Beta 2 preview – Build 5381, released to testers in early May – has been running flawlessly on my notebook for nearly three weeks.

Read more and see a screenshot slideshow of the new OS...

Plan for cloaking device unveiled

2006-05-25T16:06:00.000-05:00

So far, cloaking has been confined to science fiction; in Star Trek it is used to render spacecraft invisible.

Professor Sir John Pendry says a simple demonstration model that could work for radar might be possible within 18 months' time.

Two separate teams, including Professor Pendry's, have outlined ways to cloak objects in the journal Science.

See

Encyclopedia > Moller Skycar

2006-05-25T08:15:00.000-05:00

The Moller Skycar is a prototype personal VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft — a "flying car" — called a "volantor" by its inventor Paul Moller, who has been attempting to develop such vehicles for many years.1 The Skycar demonstrated limited tethered flight capability in 2003. More tethered flight tests are now scheduled for an undisclosed date sometime after mid 2006. Moller is currently upgrading the Skycar's engines, and the improved prototype is now called the "M400X". Download high resolution version (400x616, 66 KB)Poster for Skycar Illustration by me --Terrible Tim 15:35, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Download high resolution version (400x616, 66 KB)Poster for Skycar Illustration by me --Terrible Tim 15:35, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Image File history File links Moller_M400_hover_test. ... Image File history File links Moller_M400_hover_test. ... Prototypes or prototypical instances combine the most representative attributes of a category. ... Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) describes airplanes that can lift off vertically. ... Airbus A380 An aircraft is any machine capable of atmospheric flight. ... The Waterman Aerobile at the Smithsonian. ... Paul S. Moller (b. ...

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Last chromosome in human genome sequenced

2006-05-18T08:33:00.000-05:00

Scientists have reached a landmark point in one of the world's most important scientific projects by sequencing the last chromosome in the Human Genome, the so-called "book of life".

Chromosome 1 contains nearly twice as many genes as the average chromosome and makes up eight percent of the human genetic code.

It is packed with 3,141 genes and linked to 350 illnesses including cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

"This achievement effectively closes the book on an important volume of the Human Genome Project," said Dr Simon Gregory who headed the sequencing project at the Sanger Institute in England.

The project was started in 1990 to identify the genes and DNA sequences that provide a blueprint for human beings.

Chromosome 1 is the biggest and contains, per chromosome, the greatest number of genes.

"Therefore it is the region of the genome to which the greatest number of diseases have been localized," added Gregory, from Duke University in the United States.

The sequence of chromosome 1, which is published online by the journal Nature, took a team of 150 British and American scientists 10 years to complete. Continued...

Trio of Neptune-size planets discovered

2006-05-17T20:51:00.000-05:00

European astronomers reported the smallest planet yet spotted in the "habitable zone" of a nearby sun-like star on Wednesday.

About the size of Neptune, the planet circles the star HD 69830, some 41 light-years away in the southern sky (one light-year equals about 5.9 trillion miles.)

Two other slightly smaller planets orbit closer to the star, reports the discovery team led by Christophe Lovis of Switzerland's Geneva Observatory.

Detections of the planets "suggest that the search for habitable planets might be easier than assumed," says Harvard astronomer David Charbonneau, in a commentary accompanying the report in Thursday's Nature magazine. The habitable zone planet is not Earth-like, says Lovis, likely cloaked in a high-pressure hydrogen atmosphere.

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Natural light 'to reinvent bulbs'

2006-04-13T19:07:00.000-05:00

A light source that could put the traditional light bulb in the shade has been invented by US scientists.

The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) emits a brilliant white light when attached to an electricity supply.

The material, described in the journal Nature, can be printed in wafer thin sheets that could transform walls, ceilings or even furniture into lights.

The OLEDs do not heat up like today's light bulbs and so are far more energy efficient and should last longer.

They also produce a light that is more akin to natural daylight than traditional bulbs.

"We're hoping that this will lead to significantly longer device lifetimes in addition to higher efficiency," said Professor Mark Thompson of the University of Southern California, one of the authors of the paper.

cont.

Proving How the Universe Was Born

2006-03-16T22:03:00.000-06:00

Physicists announced Thursday that they now have the smoking gun that shows the universe went through extremely rapid expansion in the moments after the big bang, growing from the size of a marble to a volume larger than all of observable space in less than a trillion-trillionth of a second.

The discovery -- which involves an analysis of variations in the brightness of microwave radiation -- is the first direct evidence to support the two-decade-old theory that the universe went through what is called inflation.

It also helps explain how matter eventually clumped together into planets, stars and galaxies in a universe that began as a remarkably smooth, super-hot soup.

"It's giving us our first clues about how inflation took place," said Michael Turner, assistant director for mathematics and physical sciences at the National Science Foundation. "This is absolutely amazing."

Brian Greene, a Columbia University physicist, said: "The observations are spectacular and the conclusions are stunning."

Researchers found the evidence for inflation by looking at a faint glow that permeates the universe. That glow, known as the cosmic microwave background, was produced when the universe was about 300,000 years old -- long after inflation had done its work.

Honda Accord ADAS auto-pilot system takes the reins

2006-02-01T15:42:00.000-06:00

Posted Jan 30th 2006 4:35PM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Transportation
We've heard of radar assisted cruise control, that has certain luxury cars running at set speeds on the highway, but slows them down or speeds them up when they get too close to a car in front or behind. Well now Honda UK is taking it to another level with their Advanced Driver Assist System (ADAS) that not only regulates your speed, but manages the turning, allowing you a full auto-pilot system for your Accord when you're out on the freeway. The Adaptive Cruise Control is your regular radar variety, but the Lane Keep Assist System keeps you headed in the right direction by using a camera on the rear-view mirror to watch the white lines and turn accordingly. Honda was quick to point out that their system isn't exactly set up for you to take a nap, since the ADAS system will beep every 10 seconds to make sure you're paying attention, requiring you to touch the steering wheel to inform the car you're still in charge, but we're sure someone is going manage an accident and an ensuing lawsuit or three out of this "convenience".

Source

China to build world`s first "artificial sun" experimental device

2006-01-22T15:17:00.000-06:00

HEFEI, 01/21 - A full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, which aims to generate infinite, clean nuclear-fusion-based energy, will be built in March or April in Hefei, capital city of east China`s Anhui Province.

Experiments with the advanced new device will start in July or August. If the experiments prove successful, China will become the first country in the world to build a full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, nicknamed "artificial sun", experts here said.

The project, dubbed EAST (experimental advanced superconducting Tokamak), is being undertaken by the Hefei-based Institute of Plasma Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It will require a total investment of nearly 300 million yuan (37 million U.S. dollars), only one fifteenth to one twentieth the cost of similar devices being developed in the other parts of the world.

The new device will be an upgrade of China`s first superconducting Tokamak device, dubbed HT-7, which was also built by the plasma physics institute, in partnership with Russia, in the early 1990s. HT-7 made China the fourth country in the world, after Russia, France and Japan, to have such a device.

Full article

New Horizons will study Pluto and Kuiper Belt

2006-01-17T13:00:00.000-06:00

CAPE CANAVERAL — A piano-sized space probe neared the end of its countdown Tuesday for a mission to Pluto, the solar system's last unexplored planet, and to study a mysterious zone of icy objects at the outer edges of the planetary system.

Even though the scheduled afternoon liftoff was intended to make New Horizons the fastest spacecraft ever launched, the distance involved means scientists won't be able to receive data on Pluto until at least July 2015, the earliest date the mission is expected to arrive.

"To make a decision to work in the field of space science is almost the ultimate in delayed gratification," NASA administrator Michael Griffin said at a news conference Tuesday.

A successful journey to Pluto would complete an exploration of the planets started by NASA in the early 1960s with unmanned missions to observe Mars, Mercury and Venus.

"What we know about Pluto today could fit on the back of a postage stamp," Colleen Hartman, a deputy associate administrator at NASA, said earlier. "The textbooks will be rewritten after this mission is completed."

Full article

Google and Yahoo tune into television

2006-01-06T09:57:00.000-06:00

Two ascending Internet giants, Google and Yahoo, were planning to make plain Friday that they intend to move aggressively beyond the Internet browser and onto the television screen.

The two companies, already the most popular services for searching and organizing the vast information on the Web, want to perform the same function for television, which will increasingly be delivered over the Internet.

Indeed, much of the innovation at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where top executives of both companies were to speak late Friday, revolves around video gadgets of all sizes that connect online to new programming services.

Both Yahoo and Google have emerged as potent threats to television networks because they are drawing ad dollars to their existing sites.

cont. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/06/business/google.php

Vote for seven wonders

2006-01-02T20:21:00.001-06:00

The Acropolis in Athens made it, as did Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia, China's Great Wall, the Colosseum in Rome, the Inca temple of Machu Picchu in Peru, Stonehenge and the Moai - the Easter Island statues.

Less immediately obvious choices in a final shortlist of 21 contenders for the New Seven Wonders of the World, announced in Switzerland yesterday, included the Kremlin in Moscow, the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty.

Cont.

New Space Race: Make Extraterrestrial Travel Cheap And Safe For Ordinary People…

2006-01-02T11:01:00.000-06:00

A plan to build the world’s first airport for launching commercial spacecraft in New Mexico is the latest development in the new space race, a race among private companies and billionaire entrepreneurs to carry paying passengers into space and to kick-start a new industry, astro tourism.

The man who is leading the race may not be familiar to you, but to astronauts, pilots, and aeronautical engineers – basically to anyone who knows anything about aircraft design – Burt Rutan is a legend, an aeronautical engineer whose latest aircraft is the world’s first private spaceship. As he told 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley when he first met him a little over a year ago, if his idea flies, someday space travel may be cheap enough and safe enough for ordinary people to go where only astronauts have gone before.

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More Rings Are Found Around Planet Uranus

2005-12-23T09:12:00.000-06:00

LOS ANGELES - Astronomers aided by the Hubble Space Telescope have spied two more rings encircling Uranus, the first additions to the planet's ring system in nearly two decades.

The faint, dusty rings orbit outside of Uranus' previously known rings, but within the orbits of its large moons, said Mark Showalter, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who made the discovery.

Cont.

Yahoo! plans to shoot Skype with Messenger

2005-12-09T11:22:00.000-06:00

Internet media giant Yahoo! has fired the first salvo in a pricing war with Skype with plans to introduce a new internet voice service within days.

Yahoo! is releasing an upgrade to its popular Messenger text, voice and video communications software with the addition of a feature that's familiar to Skype's 68million worldwide users.

"Phone out" will let people make calls from computers to regular telephones while "Phone in" will let computer users receive telephone calls. The service mirror's Skype's equivalent service, named "Skype in" and "Skype out."

Yahoo! said it would undercut Skype's pricing plans for the telephone services, charging just 1¢per minute to people calling the US from countries such as Russia. It will charge 2¢ a minute to call 30 other countries, including Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Korea.

A Yahoo! spokeswoman said it would make the Yahoo! Messenger service available in 180countries, with downloads available from http://voice.yahoo.com/, although as of late on Friday the site was yet to go live.

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Google: Ten Golden Rules

2005-12-07T21:18:00.000-06:00

Issues 2006 - At google, we think business guru Peter Drucker well understood how to manage the new breed of "knowledge workers." After all, Drucker invented the term in 1959. He says knowledge workers believe they are paid to be effective, not to work 9 to 5, and that smart businesses will "strip away everything that gets in their knowledge workers' way." Those that succeed will attract the best performers, securing "the single biggest factor for competitive advantage in the next 25 years."

At Google, we seek that advantage. The ongoing debate about whether big corporations are mismanaging knowledge workers is one we take very seriously, because those who don't get it right will be gone. We've drawn on good ideas we've seen elsewhere and come up with a few of our own. What follows are seven key principles we use to make knowledge workers most effective. As in most technology companies, many of our employees are engineers, so we will focus on that particular group, but many of the policies apply to all sorts of knowledge workers.

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Firefox is rekindled with faster, slicker revamp

2005-12-01T08:39:00.000-06:00

The non-profit Mozilla Foundation hopes to up the heat on Microsoft after launching a faster, revamped version of its popular Firefox internet browser.

Firefox 1.5, which is available as a free download from www.Mozilla.com, will aim to build on the success of last year’s Firefox 1.0, which won a cult following among users who say the software is slicker and more secure than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), the market leader.

Full article here