The top 10 environmental revelations of 2007

by Rigel Gregg
Jan 10th 2008 @ 12:01PM

Filed under: News, Climate Change

So, 2007 has come and gone and we're on to bigger and better things in 2008. I wonder what we're all in store for this year as far as the environment and new discoveries are concerned? Looking back at last year there were all kinds of environmental and planetary revelations, with most of them decidedly not on the positive side and many of them representing big concerns in the scheme of the world. From climate change and extreme weather conditions to endangered animal species and melting ice caps, 2007 was a year of serious discoveries. Here are 10 of the biggest environmental revelations of last year:

Gallery: 10 earth science revelations of 2007

Solar cells that work at night?

Posted Jan 10th 2008 10:48AM by Jeremy Korzeniewski
Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Solar

The Idaho National Laboratory, Microcontinuum, Inc. and Patrick Pinhero from the University of Missouri are developing an exciting new technology which uses "nano-antennas" to capture solar energy. What is especially cool about this new solar technology is that it would operate both during the day and at night by using the leftover radiation after the sun goes down. Each nano-antenna is a spiral as wide as 1/25 the diameter of a human hair, meaning that many of them can be fit into a tiny space, and may be as much as 80 percent efficient.

At this time, researchers have a ways to go before the technology is commercialized, but they are hoping that their finished product would be no more expensive as a coating than a cheap layer of carpeting.

[Source: Gizmag]

Fluorescent lions, tigers and pigs! Oh my!

by Sea Stachura
Jan 10th 2008 @ 3:02PM

Filed under: Health, News

China may not have been the first country to send its people to the moon, but so far it is the first country to turn its pigs fluorescent green. At least, that's what China's state media is reporting.

An agricultural researcher in China injected fluorescent green protein into the pig embryos. Of the 11 born, two share their mother's fondness for green.

The pigs glow green under ultraviolet light.

While this may sound like a joke for St. Patrick's Day, researchers say this is actually evidence that animals can successfully carry and develop foreign genes.

Liu Zhonghua was the researcher in charge. She says this bodes well for organ development.

That is, said green pig could grow a stomach, liver or kidney for later human transplant.

[via Reuters]

Car runs on nothing but air

by Jonathon Morgan
Jan 10th 2008 @ 2:06PM

Filed under: Cars and Transportation

Hybrid technology has made it possible for cars to emit less and get significantly better gas mileage -- all without hindering performance. Hooray! But while the environmental gains from the new alternative energy vehicles are significant, these cars and trucks are still using up the planet's resources -- just more slowly. Even electric cars still run on juice that most likely came from a coal power plant.

Gallery: Alternative transportation

So unless you're walking or riding your bike, your mode of transportation is bound to impact the planet at least somewhat -- unless you drive this. The MiniCat, developed by Motor Development International, probably won't travel at light-speed (or even 50 mph), but it will be able to run on nothing more than compressed air.

Plus, the car is only about 8 feet long, so parallel parking won't be such a nightmare!

Super Soaker Inventor Hopes to Double Solar Efficiency

Posted by timothy on Wednesday January 09, @06:32PM
from the if-they-get-too-hot-we-can-super-soak-them dept.

mattnyc99 writes "With top geeks saying photovoltaic cells are still four years away from costing as much as the grid, and the first U.S. thermal power plant just getting into production, there's plenty of solar hype without any practical solution that's efficient enough. Until Lonnie Johnson came along. The man who invented the Super Soaker water gun turns out to be a nuclear engineer who's developed a solid-state heat engine that converts the sun's heat to electricity at 60-percent efficiency—double the rate of the next most successful solar process. And his innovation, called the Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Conversion (JTEC) system, is getting funding from the National Science Foundation, so this is no toy. From the article: 'If it proves feasible, drastically reducing the cost of solar power would only be a start. JTEC could potentially harvest waste heat from internal combustion engines and combustion turbines, perhaps even the human body. And no moving parts means no friction and fewer mechanical failures.'"

[+] patents, power, science, technology, matrix (tagging beta)

Scientists Examine Dinosaur Skin

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 10, @01:27AM
from the beyond-wrinkled dept.

jd writes "Fossilized skin from a dinosaur in China is allowing paleontologists a better understanding of what dinosaur skin was like. A tear, caused by a predator, shows that below the scales of the Psittacosaurus was a thick hide comprised of 25 layers of collagen. Other than the multitude of layers, this is very similar in nature to modern shark skin. The gash caused by a predator allowed the skin and the soft interior to be fossilized along with the bones. This is not the same dinosaur that had been reported previously on Slashdot, which was found in South Dakota, although the process and extent of fossilization is very similar."

2.5 Years in Jail for Planting 'Logic Bomb'

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday January 09, @08:56AM
from the well-that-seems-fairly-light dept.

cweditor writes "A former Medco Health systems administrator was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $81,200 in restitution for planting a logic bomb on a network that held customer health care information. The code was designed to delete almost all information on about 70 company servers. This may be longest federal prison sentence for trying to damage a corporate computer system, although Yung-Hsun Lin faced a maximum of 10 years." How long before the disgruntled sysadmin replaces the disgruntled postal worker in the zeitgeist?

[+] court, security, goingpostal, goingsysadm (tagging beta)

New Chip For Square Kilometer Radio Telescope

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 08, @03:21PM
from the little-green-men-using-quantum-computers dept.

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet Aus reported on a new low-noise chip that could help in building the $1.6B Square Kilometer Array, the world's largest radio telescope. Wikipedia claims the telescope will be 50 times as sensitive as current instruments. It will have a resolution of able to detect every active galactic nucleus out to a redshift of 6, when the universe was less than 1 billion years old and way crazy. It will have the sensitivity to detect Earth-like radio leakage at a distance of several hundred to a few thousand light years, which could help greatly with the search for extraterrestrial life. The chip's designer, Prof. Jack Singh, commented on the chip's ability to help with quantum computing research, due to its ability to operate at millikelvin temperatures, necessary to prevent quantum decoherence."

Scientists Restore Walking After Spinal Cord Injury

Journal written by stemceller (975823) and posted by kdawson on Wednesday January 09, @05:34AM
from the man-who-mistook-his-legs-for-a-pair-of-scissors dept.

Spinal cord damage blocks the routes that the brain uses to send messages to the nerve cells that control walking. Until now, doctors believed that the only way for injured patients to walk again was to re-grow the long nerve highways that link the brain and base of the spinal cord. For the first time, a UCLA study shows that the central nervous system can reorganize itself and follow new pathways to restore the cellular communication required for movement. The lead researcher said, "This pessimistic view [that severe injury to the spinal cord means permanent paralysis] has changed over my lifetime, and our findings add to a growing body of research showing that the nervous system can reorganize after injury."

Voltaic's new Generator solar bag can charge a laptop

Posted Jan 9th 2008 4:28AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: CES, Laptops, Wearables

There are plenty of solar bags on the market which can squeeze some extra juice into your phone or handheld, or perhaps even trickle a charge into your laptop over a few days, but Voltaic is launching the first member of its lineup to fully charge a laptop with a day of sunlight. The "Generator" bag produces 14.7 watts from a single solar panel, but that's only with a full day of sun, so we're guessing you'll end up getting much less of a laptop charge with a normal day of use. In addition to a laptop plug the bag includes adapters for phones, USB devices and a car charger, and there's a battery inside the bag to improve the efficiency of the panel and to keep the juice flowing when you're in the shade. It all sounds great, but the bad news here is the price: $599. Yeah, your money might be better spent on a few spares batteries, but if you're going to be spending a week or so away from plugs, the Generator just might be the ticket.

Tags: breaking news, BreakingNews, ces 2008, Ces2008, generator, laptop bag, LaptopBag, solar bag, SolarBag, voltaic

Power from Nuclear Waste?

Also from tomorrow's trends

Britain may attempt a program to re-use nuclear waste to get more power...

A plan by the nuclear industry to build a £1bn fuel processing plant at Sellafield is being backed by the government's chief scientist. The plant would turn the UK's 60,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste into reactor fuel that will provide 60 per cent of this country's electricity until 2060, it is claimed.'We can bury our reactor waste or we can treat it and then use it as free fuel for life,' said the cabinet's chief science adviser, Sir David King. 'It's a no-brainer.'

But the plan is controversial. A report by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which operates the Cumbrian plant and backs the plan, acknowledges the move could have 'downside' economic costs, although it also stresses it has many benefits. In addition, green groups say the move would lead to the creation of 'a plutonium economy' in Britain that would see large quantities of nuclear fuel being transported across the country.

Nuclear waste could power Britain | Science | The Observer

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Making oil out of trash

I have read about this machine before. It looks like it may be becoming economically/ commercially viable:

I’m not sure if I’m watching a magic trick, or an invention that will make the cigar-chomping 64-year-old next to me the richest man on the planet. Everything that goes into Frank Pringle’s recycling machine—a piece of tire, a rock, a plastic cup—turns to oil and natural gas seconds later. “I’ve been told the oil companies might try to assassinate me,” Pringle says without sarcasm.The machine is a microwave emitter that extracts the petroleum and gas hidden inside everyday objects—or at least anything made with hydrocarbons, which, it turns out, is most of what’s around you. Every hour, the first commercial version will turn 10 tons of auto waste—tires, plastic, vinyl—into enough natural gas to produce 17 million BTUs of energy (it will use 956,000 of those BTUs to keep itself running). PopSci's Best of What's New 2007

US adds one new person every 12 seconds

From Tomorrow's Trends

The net impact of births/ deaths and migration means that the US adds one person every 12 seconds.

As our nation prepares to ring in the New Year, the U.S. Census Bureau today projected the Jan. 1, 2005, population of the United States will be 295,160,302 — up 2,835,602 or 1.0 percent from New Year’s Day 2004. In January, the United States is expected to register one birth every eight seconds and one death every 13 seconds. Meanwhile, net international migration is expected to add one person every 26 seconds. The result is an increase in the total population of one person every 12 seconds.

US Census Press Releases

The Air Car

I have posted about the air car concept before. Here is a video on the experimental air-car...

YouTube - The Air Car

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World Record Fuel Efficiency

The PAC-Car II set a new world record in fuel efficient driving during the Shell Eco-marathon in Ladoux (France) on June 26, 2005. Running on hydrogen, the PAC-Car II achieved the equivalent of 5,385 km per liter of gasoline (12,666 MPG!)

Are biofuels worse for the planet than gasoline?

by Patrick Metzger
Jan 8th 2008 @ 9:30AM

Filed under: Cars and Transportation, Alternative Energy

Feeling smug because you just switched the Family Truckster over to 100% homegrown all-veggie save-the-planet biofuels? Not so fast - a new study by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute suggests that some biofuels may do more damage to the planet than the oil, gas and coal they're intended to replace.

The study looks at 26 dfferent biofuels and compares their greenhouse-gas reduction to their overall environmental impact, including effects on ecosystems and use of natural resources. The results showed that all biofuels are not equal, with some being just about as green as claimed, while others aren't much better than powering your car with coal. In all, 12 of the fuels considered had a greater environmental impact than gasoline burning. The best fuels from an environmental standpoint are those made from the waste products of other processes, like used cooking oil or ethanol from wood. The worst are those which may encourage destruction of existing eco-systems to grow the feed crop, especially Malaysian palm oil, Brazilian soy, or American corn. The researchers did not take into account the higher food prices that result from converting farmland over to fuel crops.

The lessons? Conservation remains key, and it's not enough just to avoid oil. Even "green" alternatives can have a downside.

via [Science Daily]

New Jersey might add mini-windmills to Turnpike

by Patricia Mayville-Cox
Jan 8th 2008 @ 7:43AM

Filed under: Cars and Transportation, News, Alternative Energy

Ok, the New Jersey Turnpike is, uh, not the prettiest part of New Jersey, but it might be a little bit greener if an NJ senator gets his way.

New Jersey might build mini windmills along the Turnpike as a way to generate electricity and cut pollution, according to State Senator Raymond Lesniak. The mini windmills, just a few feet high, could be placed on rooftops, bridges or towers along the turnpike.

Lesniak came up with the idea after bicycling in France, where giant windmills are common. These mini windmills could produce enough electricity to power state-owned buildings along the highway according to Lesniak,or to run refrigerated trucks as they idle at Port Elizabeth waiting to be unloaded.

Lesniak has pledged to put this mini windmill plan in an upcoming Turnpike bill.

Tom's of Maine Natural Deodorant keeps the funk at bay

by Kelly Leahy
Jan 8th 2008 @ 8:29AM

Filed under: Health, Shopping Guide, Natural Body Care

Every morning as I applied my antiperspirant, a little voice in my head kept shouting out all of the horrors I heard about aluminum and Alzheimer's as well as possible cancer links to deodorant ingredients. After finishing my last stick of aluminum laden antiperspirant and deodorant, I vowed to try a more natural brand.

I chose to go natural for a few reasons. First of all was that deodorant is something that I use every day; sometimes twice a day. My armpits are home to a pair of lymph nodes that are common sites for breast cancer and I'd like to avoid anything that might encourage the disease. Lastly, if there is a connection between aluminum and Alzheimer's, why risk it?

The last time that I tried natural deodorant was about 16 years ago (good God, I feel old) and it was from Tom's of Maine. I remember it not working well at all and I lived in New England at the time; an area not know for extreme heat. I now live about as deep into the South as you can get so it was with some hesitation that picked up another stick from Tom's. However, the label promised me new, improved ingredients not to mention it was the only "natural" deodorant available in this particular grocery store. Last but not least, Tom's is very committed to being environmentally friendly.

Tom's of Maine Natural Long-Lasting Deodorant Stick has added botanical hops into the formula to inhibit bacterial growth and it must be working because my highly scientific armpit sniff technique reveals little odor at the end of the day. I also don't get that sticky feeling that I remember from forgoing antiperspirants in the past. In fact my only complaint is that I was only able to find the unscented variety since I am accustomed to my underarms smelling like flowers and sunshine. Hopefully I'll be able to locate the lavender, apricot or lemongrass versions during my next shopping trip.

Related Link

Vista Shipped On 39% of PCs In 2007

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 08, @12:53AM
from the another-massive-success-could-sink-the-company dept.

Stony Stevenson writes "Vista is proving far less popular than XP did with new PC buyers during the earlier OS's first year on the market. This conclusion follows from statements by Bill Gates at this week's Consumer Electronics Show. Gates boasted that Microsoft has sold more than 100 million copies of Windows Vista since the OS launched last January. Based on Gates's statement, Windows Vista was aboard just 39% of the PC's that shipped in 2007. And Vista, in terms of units shipped, only outperformed first-year sales of XP by 10%, according to Gates's numbers, while PC shipments have doubled in the years since XP's release."

[+] microsoft, windows, vistasucks, slaythebeast, epicfail (tagging beta)

Westchester County says, "recycle or else!"

by Kelly Leahy
Jan 7th 2008 @ 12:01PM

Filed under: Home, Local, News

Westchester County, an affluent New York suburb, has had enough with residents who don't recycle. Starting this week, those who do not put recyclables in the proper bins will receive a yellow "oops" sticker on their garbage can. If the offending parties don't change their ways, a red sticker will be issued for a second offense and their garbage will not be picked up.

The idea is interesting. The stickers not only chastise the recycling offender directly but there is also an element of peer pressure and public shaming that goes into play. I assume that in order to issue the proper sticker, there will be some dumpster diving involved by the trash collection service which doesn't break any laws but who wants their trash rifled through?

Do you think that Westchester is on the right track or is there a better way to get your neighbors to recycle?

Related Link

Chef Jamie Oliver attacks chicken

by Kelly Leahy
Jan 7th 2008 @ 3:04PM

Filed under: Food

Jamie Oliver, a.k.a. the Naked Chef, has a bone to pick with the chicken industry. A trip to a chicken farm last fall propelled Oliver into a crusade to make living conditions less foul for England's ... well, fowl. The pouty lipped chef is pictured on a his website cozying up next to a hen.

The Naked Chef asks the citizens of England to pony up the extra pound it takes to buy a free range chicken over a broiler that is conventionally farmed. Oliver notes that free range birds have more space to roam, natural light and "stuff to do."

A typical broiler takes five weeks to reach slaughter weight thanks to genetic engineering. This growth period is half as long as the typical chicken of the 1950's and puts a lot of strain on the health of the bird. Additionally, chickens are bred to have a disproportionate amount of breast tissue which causes moderate to severe leg disorders.

Jamie Oliver has produced Jamie's Fowl Dinners that will air in England on January 11th. He hopes that the informative show will encourage people to change their ways and demand that the old way of raising chickens will fly the coop. Brits, however, might become a bit peckish when told that their favorite, inexpensive meat could cost them more, if Oliver has his way.

Related Link

Mitsubishi laser TV unveiled

Posted Jan 8th 2008 1:21AM by Ben Drawbaugh
Filed under: CES, Features

Tonight at the Moon Room on the top floor of the The Palms Hotel & Casino overlooking Las Vegas, Mitsubishi unveiled its laser HDTV. As expected, Mitsubishi kicked off the event with a few execs expressing their love for lasers -- and Mitsubishi in general. They explained that Mitsubishi is a leader in laser technology and owns 75% of the led laser market, so bringing them together with big screen TVs made perfect sense. Then the event went from execs to night club as the curtain was dropped and there were three 65-inch laser HDTVs on display. At first glance the colors were sensational and the contrast was extremely intense; and although we were hard pressed to see anything that struck us as groundbreaking, we'll need to see this side by side with a traditional set to really know what we're looking at. Unfortunately, the event was short on details, such as price or availability, but during 2008 is the time frame Mitsubishi is aiming for.

Microsoft Apologizes To Rival

Posted by kdawson on Monday January 07, @08:12PM
from the it's-the-software-stupid dept.

Geoffrey.landis writes "Microsoft apologized to rival software vendor Corel Corp. for saying that Corel's file format posed a security risk, and issued a set of tools to unblock file types that had been blocked by default in the December Office 2003 service pack. In his blog on the Microsoft site, David Leblanc says 'We did a poor job of describing the default format changes.' He goes on to explain, 'We stated that it was the file formats that were insecure, but this is actually not correct. A file format isn't insecure — it's the code that reads the format that's more or less secure.' As noted by News.com, 'it is the parsing code that Office 2003 uses to open and save the file types that is less secure.' Larry Seltzer at pcmag.com also blogs the story."

[+] security, microsoft, corel, hellfrozeover, corellinux (tagging beta)

NASA Spacecraft Set to Shine Spotlight on Mercury

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 07, @06:30PM
from the long-lead-time dept.

coondoggie writes to tell us Network World is reporting that NASA will this month see the realization of a mission launched in 2004, sent to explore the planet Mercury. "MESSENGER, launched in 2004, is the first NASA mission sent to orbit Mercury, the planet closest to the sun. But on Jan. 14 it will pass close by the planet and use Mercury's gravity for a critical assist needed to keep the spacecraft on track for its ultimate orbit around the planet three years from now. Still, the spacecraft is also expected to throw back some never-before -seen images, NASA said. The flyby also will gather essential data for planning the overall mission. After flybys of Earth, Venus, and Mercury, it will start a year-long orbital study of Mercury in March 2011, NASA said. "

Making 3D Models from Video Clips

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 07, @05:24PM
from the fun-toys dept.

BoingBoing is covering an interesting piece of software called VideoTrace that allows you to easily create 3D models from the images in video clips. "The user interacts with VideoTrace by tracing the shape of the object to be modeled over one or more frames of the video. By interpreting the sketch drawn by the user in light of 3D information obtained from computer vision techniques, a small number of simple 2D interactions can be used to generate a realistic 3D model."

[+] media, technology, computer, vision, modeling (tagging beta)

Korean robots to build high-rises by 2010

Posted Jan 8th 2008 4:30AM by Barb Dybwad
Filed under: Robots

Dude, Korea knows we've been sending humans to do a robot's job for far too long already, and in a few short years the dangerous world of high rise construction could be left to the true masters of the craft. By 2010, the Korean Construction and Transportation Ministry hopes to have an almost completely automated construction process in place for high-rise projects that could cut labor costs by up to a third, project timelines by 15 percent, and reduce the number of construction-related injuries on these typically dangerous projects. Of course, an inevitable robotic Jurgis Rudkus will be blowing the whistle on robotic working conditions shortly thereafter. Still, civilization stands to benefit greatly from the accelerated completion of super-sized skyscrapers -- at least until the builders turn on us and convert us into human fuel cells.

Portland's "bike boxes" make the city even more bike-friendly

Posted Jan 7th 2008 11:52AM by Sebastian Blanco
Filed under: On Two Wheels, Green Daily

I've been a biker ever since my college days. I've used a bike to commute through Michigan (and northern Japanese) winters, hot times in Georgia and up steep residential streets in Hawai'i. But I've never biked in a place as bike-friendly as Portland, Oregon. I've only spent a few days there, but damn if that city doesn't put a premium on encouraging two-wheeled, human-powered transportation.

Still, whenever bikes and cars share the road, accidents are likely - and bikers almost always suffer for it. Following six bicycle deaths on city roads last year, new "bike boxes" will be added to 14 busy Portland intersections, according to The Oregonian. These boxes are common in Europe, but Portland is likely to be the first place in the U.S. to use them. The blue-painted areas are intended to give bikers a place to rest in front of automobiles at traffic lights and prevent accidents due to "right hooks" (where cars turning right hit a biker using the right side of the road). Cars will also be prevented from making right turns on red. The boxes make a lot of sense when bike are able to get to the bike box when the light is red, but they'll still need to be extra careful once traffic is moving.

[Source: Andy Dworkin / The Oregonian via Worldchanging]

China looking at environmental disaster

by Patrick Metzger
Jan 7th 2008 @ 11:30AM

Filed under: News, Polit-eco, Climate Change

If you want to dance, you gotta pay the piper. China has been the global economic success story of the last two decades, with average income has increased in leaps and bounds. The world's most populous nation has become the world's leading manufacturer of everything from sportswear to washing machines, and if some toxic toys and poison pet food occasionally find their way into shipping containers, well, that's the price you pay to get rich. However, now the cost of rapid industrialization is becoming clear, in the form of burgeoning ecological catastrophe caused by climate change and indifferent environmental policies.

Forbes reports that China's largest freshwater lake, Poyang Lake, has been so afflicted by drought that it has shrunk from 3000 square kilometres in July to 50 square kilometres today. As a result, 100,000 people living near the lake are reportedly suffering from severe water shortages, and a species of finless porpoise that lives in the lake is at risk of extinction.

And Poyang Lake is only one symptom of the evironmental problems that are troubling China, which are exacerbated by engineering projects like the Three Gorges dam. The State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters has said that the drought currently affecting most of the country will probably continue through 2008, and the government is working desperately to clean up Beijing in time for this year's Olympics, in spite of sandstorms sweeping in from the Gobi desert and enveloping the city with growing frequency.

The climate change crisis isn't limited to China, of course, as anyone living in drought-stricken regions of the US an attest. However, as the world's biggest spewers of greenhouse gases, both China and the US need to take the lead in cleaning up their act. Othewise, that piper bill is going to get real expensive.

Related Link

Mathematician Theorizes a Crystal As Beautiful As A Diamond

Posted by Zonk on Monday January 07, @02:41AM
from the i-prefer-my-stones-blood-free-thanks dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Why are diamonds so shiny and beautiful? A Japanese mathematician says it's because of their unique crystal structure and two key properties, called 'maximal symmetry' and 'strong isotropic property.' According to the American Mathematical Society (AMS), he found that out of all the crystals that are possible to construct mathematically, just one shares these two properties with the diamond. So far, his K4 crystal exists only as a mathematical object. And nobody knows if it exists — or if it can be synthesized."

Alienware curved display rocks Crysis at 2880 x 900

Posted Jan 7th 2008 1:16AM by Barb Dybwad
Filed under: CES, Displays

Don't get all frothed up quite yet because it's still only a prototype, but this sweet doublewide curved DLP display with OLED illumination from Alienware will reportedly be available in the second half of '08. The curvature of the 2880 x 900 rez screen mimics peripheral vision, and in action the performance seemed pretty flawless to our Crysis-dazzled eyes (official specs report less than .02-millisecond response time). We did notice three faint vertical dividing lines that appeared to indicate four sub-panels making up this screen, but we may be willing to suspend disbelief in exchange for the potential of indulgent wrap-around immersion. There's not even an inkling of an MSRP on this thing yet, but you know we're gonna be keeping our eyes on this sucker for ya. Pics below and don't miss our video footage.

Why Intel and OLPC Parted Ways

Posted by Zonk on Sunday January 06, @08:13AM
from the so-the-drama dept.

runamock writes "The New York Times has an article that sheds some light on why Intel left the OLPC board: 'A frail partnership between Intel and the One Laptop Per Child educational computing group was undone last month in part by an Intel saleswoman: She tried to persuade a Peruvian official to drop the country's commitment to buy a quarter-million of the organization's laptops in favor of Intel PCs. Intel and the group had a rocky relationship from the start in their short-lived effort to get inexpensive laptops into the hands of the world's poorest children. But the saleswoman's tactic was the final straw for Nicholas Negroponte.'"

Anti-Missile Technology To Be Tested on Commercial Jets

Posted by Zonk on Sunday January 06, @06:46PM
from the because-our-airline-tickets-were-too-cheap dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "As many as three American Airlines passenger jets will be outfitted this spring with laser technology intended to protect planes from missile attacks. The tests, which could involve more than 1,000 flights, will determine how the technology holds up under the rigors of flight. The technology is intended to stop attacks by detecting heat from missiles, then responding in a fraction of a second by firing laser beams to jam the missiles' guidance systems. A Rand study in 2005 estimated it would cost about $11 billion to protect every US airliner from shoulder-fired missiles. Over 20 years, the cost to develop, procure and operate anti-missile systems could hit $40 billion."