Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Almost 1 In 3 US Warplanes Is a Drone
Posted by samzenpus
from the skynet-approved dept.
parallel_prankster writes"A recent Congressional Research Service report,titled U.S. Unmanned Aerial Systems, looks at the more-prominent role being played by drones. In 2005, drones made up just 5 percent of the military's aircraft. Today one in three American military aircraft is a drone. The upsides of drones being they are cheaper and safer — the military spent 92% of the aircraft procurement money on manned aircraft. The downside — they're bandwidth hogs: a single Global Hawk drone requires 500 megabytes per second worth of bandwidth, the report finds, which is 500 percent of the total bandwidth of the entire U.S. military used during the 1991 Gulf War."
Cambridge Scientists Create Huge Quantum Particles
Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the quantum-mechanics-never-looked-so-good dept.
judgecorp writes"Researchers at Cambridge University have produced a quantum fluid thousands of times larger than previously, leading to the possibility ofpolaritons produced at lower power and at a broader temperature range. This could lead to quantum circuits, as well as applications such as more sensitive gyroscopes."
What Does Sunset On an Alien World Look Like?
Posted by Soulskill
from the forgot-my-camera dept.
The Bad Astronomer writes"Using real data from Hubble Space Telescope of a planet orbiting another star, exoplanetary scientist Frédéric Pont created a lovely imageof what sunset would look like from HD209458b, nicknamed Osiris, a planet 150 light years away. The Hubble data gave information on the atmospheric absorption of this hot Jupiter planet, and, coupled with models of how the atmosphere was layered, Pont was able to create a realistic looking sunset on the planet. The big surprise: the star looks green as it sets! Sodium absorption sucks out the red colors and blue is scattered away, leaving just the green hues to get through. It's a lovely application of hard scientific knowledge."
Monday, January 9, 2012
Carbon Emissions 'Will Defer Ice Age'
Posted by Soulskill
from the not-cool dept.
Sven-Erik writes"Due to subtle variations in the Earth's orbit, researchers have calculated that the next Ice Age is due within 1,500 years. However, a new study suggests greenhouse gas emissions mean it will not happen that soon(abstract). 'Dr Skinner's group ... calculates that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would have to fall below about 240 parts per million (ppm) before the glaciation could begin. The current level is around 390ppm. Other research groups have shown that even if emissions were shut off instantly, concentrations would remain elevated for at least 1,000 years, with enough heat stored in the oceans potentially to cause significant melting of polar ice and sea level rise.'"
Friday, January 6, 2012
‘Time Cloaking’ remarkable experiment hides event in time Read more: http://www.zmescience.com/science/physics/time-cloaking/#ixzz1ii32lq57
Cloaking used to be one of my favorite SciFi themes. James Bond supercars that would show up or disappear instantly at the flick of an alarm key, the hallow man, objects rendered completely invisible to the human eye and lost in the surroundings. I say used to be because spatial cloaking has transcended for some time now in the realm of reality, after researchers successfully created an invisibility cloak from metamaterials. Cornell University physicists have taken this concept, however, to a whole new level – temporal cloaking.
Remarkably, the Cornell scientists managed to basically create a wrinkle in time in which, albeit for a trillionth of a second, any objects that passed through it became invisible and events went unrecorded. Now this is far from being magic, of course, and like spatial cloaking, the time cloak experiment is based on the same principles of physics which discuss the manipulation of light.
Its hard to find a working analogy, but you could view this as a video tape with a missing frame, only that missing millisecond in video isn’t lost in the time cloak experiment, but hidden – physical information can never be lost, maybe except for black holes.
The team of researchers used a system of two half time-lenses connected with one another at their tips, thus forming a split time lens. A continuous beam of green light was fired from a laser which became slowed down when it passed through the first half lens, and sped up when it went through the second – a 50 picosecond gap in the beam was thus opened. During this exact window the researchers shot a stream or red light though through fiber optical cables thinner than a human hair which went on to be undetected.
“You kind of create a hole in time where an event takes place,” said study co-author Alexander Gaeta, director of Cornell’s School of Applied and Engineering Physics. “You just don’t know that anything ever happened.”
Sure using this tech won’t give you enough time to pull the perfect museum heist, however it’s truly an amazing first step. According to Cornell scientists, it’d take a machine 18,600 miles long to produce a time mask that lasts a single second. When data transmissions are concerned, this kind of temporal cloaking might prove to be incredibly useful for information security, as high speed packets of information might be able to travel undetected without disrupting the actual flow.
“We think of time in the way that other people think of space. What other people are doing in space, we can do it in time,” said Moti Fridman, a researcher at the School of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University .“I think it’s a big step forward,” said Vladimir M. Shalaev, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University, who has worked on spatial cloaking. “It’s another example of the beauty of ‘transformational optics,’ which is behind all these ideas.”
Read more: http://www.zmescience.com/science/physics/time-cloaking/#ixzz1ii37Owqs
Australian 'stolen car' parks itself in closed garage
The car had been left in the wrong gear so rolled down an incline in the car parkA car reported as stolen from an Australian car park has been reunited with its owner, after apparently parking itself in a closed garage.
Adelaide police say they think the car rolled down an incline in the car park, across a street and into a garage forcing itself under the roller doors.
The door closed behind it and the car remained undetected for 17 days until the home-owners returned from holiday.
Fearing a burglary, they called police, who deduced the curious turn of events.
"Although the roller door was closed, it had been damaged slightly and pushed out of its tracks," a police spokesman is quoted in Australian media as saying.
Police believe that the car had not been left in the parking gear and so rolled though the car park and eventually "forced itself under the roller door, parking perfectly inside the garage where it remained safely under cover for 17 days".
The owner reported the car stolen after he parked it outside a shop in a suburb of Adelaide. Reports say that he had only bought the car two days earlier and only left it for a few minutes.
He told the police that he now recalls hearing a "bang", which may have been the car hitting the garage door, the Associated Press news agency reports.
Japan working on powerful cyber weapon, knows best defense is a good offense
By Terrence O'Brien 
posted Jan 6th 2012 7:48AM
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Leap Second Coming In June, 2012
Posted by timothy
from the they're-calling-it-a-time-step dept.
Zoxed writes"IERS have just announced a leap second due at midnight, June 30th this year. Are your systems ready?"The last leap second added was at the end of 2008.
Top 10 Majors With Least Unemployment
(Rank, Major, Unemployment Percent, Median Earnings)
1. Actuarial Science 0.0% $81,000
2. Pharmacology 0.0% $101,000
3. Educational Administration and Supervision 0.0% $89,000
4. School Student Counseling 0.0% $42,000
5. Geological and Geophysical Engineering 0.0% $101,000
6. Astronomy and Astrophysics 0.0% $101,000
7. Teacher Education: Multiple Levels 1.1% $48,000
8. Agricultural Economics 1.3% $99.000
9. Medical Technologies Technician 1.4% $74,000
10. Atmospheric Sciences and Meterology 1.6% $101,000
California State Senator Proposes Funding Open-Source Textbooks
Posted by timothy
from the benefit-the-commonwealth dept.
bcrowell writes"Although former Governor Schwarzenegger's free digital textbook initiative for K-12 education was a failure, state senator Darrell Steinberg has a new idea for the state-subsidized publication of college textbooks (details in the PDF links at the bottom). Newspaper editorials seem positive. It will be interesting to see if this works any better at the college level than it did for K-12, where textbook selection has traditionally been very bureaucratic. This is also different from Schwarzenegger's FDTI because Steinberg proposes spending state money to help create the books. The K-12 version suffered from legal uncertainty about the Williams case, which requires equal access to books for all students — many of whom might not have computers at home. At thesymposium where the results of the FDTI's first round were announced, it became apparent that the only businesses interested in participating actively were not the publishers but computer manufacturers like Dell and Apple, who wanted to sell lots of hardware to schools."
China Cuts 'Excessive Entertainment' From TV
Posted by samzenpus
from the not-too-much dept.
An anonymous reader writes"Chinese broadcasters have axed two-thirds of popular TV shows in line with a government directive to curb 'excessive entertainment.' From the article: 'The rule, first announced in October, is targeted at what Chinese regulators have called "excessive entertainment and a trend toward low taste," to address the rise of talent shows, dating shows and other such programming aired by China's tightly regulated, but increasingly competitive, regional satellite broadcasters. Authorities also encouraged broadcasters to air more news and educational programming.' according to local media reports."
Fish Mimics Octopus That Mimics Fish
ScienceDaily (Jan. 4, 2012) — Nature's game of intimidation and imitation comes full circle in the waters of Indonesia, where scientists have recorded for the first time an association between the black-marble jawfish (Stalix cf. histrio) and the mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus).
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Nap-Deprived Tots May Be Missing out On More Than Sleep
ScienceDaily (Jan. 3, 2012) — A new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder could be a wake-up call for parents of toddlers: Daytime naps for your kids may be more important than you think.
'Lost World' Discovered Around Antarctic Vents
ScienceDaily (Jan. 3, 2012) — Communities of species previously unknown to science have been discovered on the seafloor near Antarctica, clustered in the hot, dark environment surrounding hydrothermal vents.
Nokia: the Sun Can't Charge Your Phone
Posted by Soulskill
from the well-what-am-i-going-to-do-with-this-93M-mile-cord dept.
itwbennett writes"Nokia's research into solar-powered cell phones ended with a (barely audible) thud. Under the best of conditions researchers were able 'to harvest enough energy to keep the phone on standby mode but with a very restricted amount of talk time,' Nokia wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. Not surprisingly, the prototype phone, which had a solar panel on the back cover, performed better in Kenya than in other testing locations, like southern Sweden and the Arctic Circle."
Genetically Modifying Silk Worms For Super Silk
Posted by Soulskill
from the does-whatever-a-spider-can dept.
New submitter davidshenba sends this quote from the BBC:"U.S. researchers have created silkworms that are genetically modified to spin much stronger silk (abstract). In weight-for-weight terms, spider silk is stronger than steel. ... Researchers have been trying to reproduce such silk for decades. But it is unfeasible to 'farm' spiders for the commercial production of their silk because the arachnids don't produce enough of it — coupled with their proclivity for eating each other. Silk worms, however, are easy to farm and produce vast amounts of silk — but the material is fragile. Researchers have tried for years to get the best of both worlds — super-strong silk in industrial quantities — by transplanting genes from spiders into worms. But the resulting genetically modified worms have not produced enough spider silk until now. GM worms produced by a team led by Professor Don Jarvis of Wyoming University seem to be producing a composite of worm and spider silk in large amounts — which the researchers say is just as tough as spider silk."
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