Google Puts National Archives Video Online

A marching band begins to play. The United Newsreel logo, an eagle in a martial pose, flickers onto the black-and-white screen. Bold letters proclaim: “Nazi War Plants Blasted by R.A.F. in Night Raids.”  This is a World War II era newsreel, one of 100 historic videos retrieved from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration and posted Friday on Google Video. The content represents the first fruits of a joint project aimed at putting as much of the National Archives’ video content as possible online.

Site – http://news.com.com

Enormous Laser Beam Produces Artificial Star

A powerful new laser that shoots 90 kilometres into the atmosphere to produce an “artificial star” has been tested for the first time by the Very Large Telescope in Chile.  Astronomers will use the observations of the laser to correct the blurring in telescope images caused by turbulence in the Earth’s atmosphere. This will allow them to image celestial objects with the VLT at a resolution 10 times finer than currently possible.

Site – http://www.newscientistspace.com

The Future Of The Blog

BusinessWeek has an interesting interview with Six Apart, the company behind LiveJournal and Movable Type, about the future of blogging and the role of the blogger. From the article: ‘I think blog tools can get easier to use. Putting together a blog should be as easy as sending an e-mail. I foresee the next versions of blog tools as focusing less on features that appeal to early adopters. They’ll be easier for people to incorporate more media and maybe mobile capabilities. This will be important, because many more mainstream users will come to blogging. I believe the interest in blogging is just starting.

Site – http://www.businessweek.com

NASA Detects ‘Totally New’ Mystery Explosion Nearby

Space.com is reporting that NASA has detected a ‘totally new’ mystery explosion near our galaxy.” From the article: “The event, detected Feb. 18, looks something like a gamma-ray burst (GRB), scientists said. But it is much closer–about 440 million light-years away–than others. And it lasted about 33 minutes. Most GRBs are billions of light-years away and last less than a second or just a few seconds.

Site – http://www.space.com

Rise Of The Machines: Surveillance Software Gets Smart

Advanced software programs augment human analysts’ efforts to stop terrorist attacks and identify criminal deceptions, security researchers say.  The aim of such programs is to mine critical intelligence from written communications, audio intercepts, or videotapes—or all three media simultaneously.  Efficient, automated interpretation of raw data would spare human analysts from trying to pinpoint clues amid haystacks of words, sounds, and images.  “In the past it’s all been done by individuals poring over transcripts,” said psychologist James Pennebaker of the University of Texas at Austin.  Unlike computers, “humans have limits to vigilance, limits to coalescing enormous amounts of information,” said information-systems expert Tom Meservy of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Site – http://news.nationalgeographic.com

Top Five Stars That May Support Life Announced

In an atmosphere of looming federal funding cuts, the search for intelligent life on other planets is still capturing the imaginations—and research interests—of astronomers. Scientists already know that only a tiny fraction of the 200 to 400 billion stars in our galaxy seem to have what it takes to support life on orbiting planets.  Now researchers think they know where such potential habitable stars—or “habstars”—hang in the sky.
Site – http://news.nationalgeographic.com

Is Our Universe About To Be Mangled?

Our universe may one day be obliterated or assimilated by a larger universe, according to a controversial new analysis. The work suggests the parallel universes proposed by some quantum theorists may not actually be parallel but could interact – and with disastrous consequences.

Site – http://www.newscientistspace.com

Enzyme Computer Could Live Inside You

A molecular computer that uses enzymes to perform calculations has been built by researchers in Israel.  Itamar Willner, who constructed the molecular calculator with colleagues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, believes enzyme-powered computers could eventually be implanted into the human body and used to, for example, tailor the release of drugs to a specific person’s metabolism.

Site – http://www.newscientist.com

Time Out Of Mind

We can’t touch time, or smell it. Yet it is utterly inescapable. But, research shows, time is – at least partly – something we control in our heads.

Site – http://news.bbc.co.uk

Quantum Dots ‘Talk’

Ohio University scientists who hope to use quantum dots as the building blocks for the next generation of computers have found a way to make these artificial atoms communicate.  They found that when the dots were arranged at a distance from each other greater than the radius of the dots, light waves traveled between the nanocrystals coherently. In previous research, the light’s wavelength would change or become irregular during the energy exchange, which creates a breakdown in communication between quantum dots.  The results suggest that there could be a way to transmit information using light waves, laying the groundwork for a possible optical quantum computer.  The applications of the new quantum dot technology also could include medical imaging. Quantum dots could be injected into the patient, and a device containing more quantum dots could be used to show the position of dots under the skin.

Site – http://news.research.ohiou.edu

Nanotechnology To Improve Health Care Delivery – At The Molecular Scale

To help get the most potent anti-cancer drugs off the shelf and into the clinic, U-M researchers are looking at two nanotechnology approaches to precisely deliver drugs and visualize individual cells.

Site – http://nanotechwire.com

American Telcos Set Good Example For The Rest Of The World

As American telcos’ efforts to undermine network neutrality continue, word comes that now Deutsche Telekom thinks making content providers pay up is a good idea, too. It will be interesting to see how the argument plays out in Germany, since Deutsche Telekom was born out of the privatization of the German post office, and it still enjoys certain monopoly protection from the German government (protection the EU says is illegal). Does that sound familiar? There’s some parallels to the situation in the US, where the Baby Bells managed to scam a couple hundred billion dollars from taxpayers with the promise of building an open-access fiber network to every home — a promise they haven’t kept, while they’ve kept the money.

Site – http://techdirt.com