GEN-ERIC News

The burgeoning population of road vehicles in Bangalore is widely seen as a sign of the change in its economic landscape. In the literal sense, though, the landscape has posed a string of issues for governance, the traffic police on the ground and the common man. But, as most analysts have stated in recent times, the lack of a single view among governing bodies is a critical factor that has compounded traffic management. Given this backdrop, the Bangalore Traffic Information System is a fresh project that is expected to provide a far more accurate definition of the traffic problem. It could go some way toward developing a common view of the issue before arriving at micro and holistic solutions. Little wonder that M.N. Reddi, additional commissioner of police-traffic in Bangalore City, is excited about the latest public-private initiative. Reddi researched similar projects that provide live information via text messages about traffic-congested zones, speeds of vehicles in certain areas and directions from one point in the city to another. As a city synonymous with India’s IT industry, the technology application seemed almost inevitable in Bangalore, says Reddi.

“The nanotubes are microscopic carbon cylinders, thousands of times smaller than a human hair that can be easily taken up by human cells,” said Elimelech. “We wanted to find out more about where and how they are toxic.” This “nanoscience version of a David-and-Goliath story” was hailed in an ACS preview of the work as the first direct evidence that “carbon nanotubes have powerful antimicrobial activity, a discovery that could help fight the growing problem of antibiotic resistant infections.” Using the simple E. coli as test cells, the researchers incubated cultures of the bacteria in the presence of the nanotubes for up to an hour. The microbes were killed outright – but only when there was direct contact with aggregates of the SWCNTs that touched the bacteria. Elimelech speculates that the long, thin nanotubes puncture the cells and cause cellular damage.

Federal offices owe some $45 million in delinquent withholding taxes and the Internal Revenue Service needs to do more to ensure that the government lives up to its taxpaying obligations, according a report issued today. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, who oversees IRS operations, also found that as of January this year delinquent state and local government accounts totaled $254 million. “It is outrageous that government entities are failing to pay their employment taxes,” Inspector General George J. Russell said in a statement. “It is especially troubling that federal organizations are a part of this problem. The IRS must develop comprehensive procedures to remedy this inexcusable situation.” Government offices, like any private employer, must meet employment tax deposit and reporting requirements. Some 86,000 federal, state and local entities file and pay employment taxes for some 23 million employees, 20 percent of the U.S. work force. These offices pay wages of more than $760 billion and employment taxes of more than $200 billion annually.

University of Pennsylvania researchers have designed a nanoscale system to observe and measure how individual cells react to external forces. By combining microfabricated cantilevers and magnetic nanowire technology to create independent, nanoscale sensors, the study showed that cells respond to outside forces and demonstrated a dynamic biological relationship between cells and their environment. The study also revealed that cells sense force at a single adhesion point that leads not to a local response but to a remote response from the cell’s internal forces, akin to tickling the cell’s elbow and watching the knee kick. “The cell senses the force that we apply and adjusts its own internal forces to compensate,” Chris Chen, an associate professor in the Department of Bioengineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Penn, said. “This suggests that either the cell’s cytoskeleton dictates the reaction or the cell organizes a biochemical response. In either instance, cells are adapting at the microscale.”

DNA is one of the most popular building blocks of nanotechnology and is commonly used to construct ordered nanoscale structures with controlled architectures. For the most part, DNA is looked upon as a promising building block for fabricating microelectronic circuits from the bottom up. Now a team of researchers at Young propose the marriage of DNA self-assembly with standard microfabrication and lithography tools to form features such as nanochannels, nanowires, and nanoscale trenches. This discovery may open up new avenues for nanofabrication at dimensions not accessible by conventional optical lithography. Adam Woolley and Héctor Becerril have developed a method to use DNA molecules as templates to define patterns on substrates. The researchers deposit metal films over DNA molecules aligned on a substrate. The DNA molecules essentially act as nanostencils to define sub-10-nm-sized patterns on the substrate. The researchers call this process “DNA shadow nanolithography” because the metal film is deposited at an angle and the shadow cast by the DNA molecules defines the dimensions of the features on the substrate.

To protect against a nuclear bomb, a plague, a natural disaster, an asteroid collusion or some other doomsday event, scientists are lobbying to have a reserve library of human scientific and cultural achievements built and maintained on the moon. Jim Burke, a retired long-time NASA expert now working at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, warned that a doomsday asteroid or comet could annihilate global civilization and that something should be done to insure against the wholesale loss of human achievement. Burke suggests a project to create a “lunar biological and historical archive,” which would include samples and a record of human scientific and cultural achievements. The idea for what Burke calls a “space-age Noah’s Ark” is one shared by the Alliance to Rescue Civilization (ARC), which also seeks to include backups of Earth’s biological heritage and diversity in a permanently manned lunar facility.

Fluid from the stomach of cows could help power alternative fuel cells, new research shows. Electricity is generated in the new fuel cells by the breakdown of cellulose, which can be found in waste paper, other wood products and in the corn leaves and stalks that farms generate after a harvest. Using cellulose as an ethanol fuel source has been proposed as an alternative to using corn. Cows come into the picture because the fluid in their rumen (the largest chamber of their stomach) is rich in microbes that break down cellulose. Fuel cells are energy conversion devices like batteries, except they consume a reactant that must be replenished, whereas batteries store electrical energy chemically in a closed system. Various fuels can be used, including hydrogen, hydrocarbons and alcohols. The new fuel cell contains two compartments, one of which is filled with cellulose and rumen fluid. As the microbes break down the cellulose, electrons are created, which flow into the other chamber of the fuel cell, creating an electric current. “Energy is produced as the bacteria break down cellulose, which is one of the most abundant resources on our planet,” said study team leader Hamid Rismani-Yazdi, a graduate student at Ohio State University.

When Tim Brom 07’ set out to build a budget supercomputer with Calvin computer science professor Joel Adams, he didn’t know the product of his efforts might end up in his checked baggage headed for England. Brom, now a graduate student at the University of Kentucky continuing his studies in computer science, worked with Adams to build Microwulf, a machine that is among the smallest and least expensive supercomputers on the planet. “It’s small enough to check on an airplane or fit next to a desk,” said Brom. This may prove useful next summer when Brom and others from his graduate program travel to England to do work that will require “a significant amount of computing power.” And as the price of commercial supercomputers is often prohibitive for many educational institutions, bringing a “personal” supercomputer like Microwulf could be a cost-effective solution for the group of graduate researchers. “So far as we can tell, this is the first supercomputer to have this low price/performance ratio—the first to cost less than $100/Gflop,” said Adams. This is a significant achievement considering that Microwulf is more than twice as fast as Deep Blue, the IBM-created supercomputer that beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997, and cost only a fraction of the $5 million spent to build Deep Blue.

A man on a stolen bulldozer rammed the town police station early Friday, heavily damaging the building. Stanley Burt, 34, is charged with criminal mischief, reckless conduct with a deadly weapon and driving and probation violations. No one was inside at the time and no one was hurt. Police say Troy officer Kevin Stone pulled into the station parking lot just before 12:30 a.m. and saw the bulldozer repeatedly smashing into the front of the building.

Researchers at IBM will have two papers published in the journal Science this week detailing how it may be possible to use individual atoms, or groups of atoms, to store data or act as a transistor. The work revolves around harnessing magnetic anisotropy, a property of atoms. Something is anisotrophic if it has different values when it faces in different directions. If a substance is anisotrophic and the orientation of the substance can be controlled, then the orientation–the theory goes–of the atom can come to represent the 1s and 0s of digital computing. Potentially, atomic-level storage or switching could result in incredibly tiny computers. With atomic storage, you could fit a 1,000 trillion bits of information in an iPod, according to IBM estimates.

Economics is known as an imprecise science and one might need look no further than the business of calling recessions to see that. Unlike the weather, recessions arrive before you know it and depart under the same circumstances. The National Bureau of Economic Research, or NBER, is considered the official arbiter of recessions, but it doesn’t define a recessions by the school book measure of two or more consecutive quarters of economic contraction as measured by GDP. It states that “a recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months. This article lists all the recessions in the last 100 years.

According to a recent Synovate/Marketing Daily survey, 8 out of 10 Americans know what a blog is and almost half have visited blogs. The study, conducted online with 1,000 adults in the US using Synovate eNation from July 30 to August 1, shows that blogging has entered the mainstream. “Eight percent of Americans currently have their own blog,” said Tom Mularz, senior vice president at Synovate. “This is surprising given that a few years ago hardly anyone knew what a blog was.” Loyalty to specific blogs is also fairly strong with 46% of blog readers saying that they visit the same blogs regularly versus 54% who instead usually surf for new and different ones. Awareness and usage of blogs, along with people penning their own, strongly correlates to age, with younger people being much more active. Nearly 90% of those aged 25 to 34 know what a blog is, compared to just 65% of those aged 65 and over. Also, more women than men are bloggers, with 20% of American women who have visited blogs having their own versus 14 % of men.

Researchers at Purdue University have further developed a technology that could represent a pollution-free energy source for a range of potential applications, from golf carts to submarines and cars to emergency portable generators. The technology produces hydrogen by adding water to an alloy of aluminum and gallium. When water is added to the alloy, the aluminum splits water by attracting oxygen, liberating hydrogen in the process. The Purdue researchers are developing a method to create particles of the alloy that could be placed in a tank to react with water and produce hydrogen on demand. The gallium is a critical component because it hinders the formation of an aluminum oxide skin normally created on aluminum’s surface after bonding with oxygen, a process called oxidation. This skin usually acts as a barrier and prevents oxygen from reacting with aluminum. Reducing the skin’s protective properties allows the reaction to continue until all of the aluminum is used to generate hydrogen, said Jerry Woodall, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue who invented the process.

An artificial arm that uses rocket propellant to power motorized muscles is being touted by its developers as the closest thing yet to a bionic limb. Weighing in at about 4 pounds and able to move in 21 directions, the Vanderbilt Arm works remarkably similar to a human arm, which weighs about 7 pounds and can move in 26 directions. The idea is to eventually hardwire the prosthetic to a person’s nervous system for thought-controlled motion. “As far as the user is concerned, it would almost be no different than the native limb,” said Michael Goldfarb, professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

A recent Gallup Panel survey finds that American consumers are deeply suspicious of Chinese-made goods following a string of recalls of potentially unsafe products made in China, and that Americans could move away from buying Chinese products if they follow through on their stated intentions to adjust their purchasing habits. According to the survey, a solid majority of Americans report paying more attention to which countries produce the products they buy, say they are making an effort to avoid buying products made in China, and express a willingness to pay higher prices for similar goods made in the United States. The Aug. 23-26 survey of 1,001 nationally representative Gallup Panel members finds 72% of Americans saying they are now paying more attention to which country produces the products they buy. Gallup asked this question prior to any explicit mention in the survey of the recent reports of safety problems with Chinese-made products. But, the responses are likely a reflection of such reports, since 45% of respondents later said they were following news about unsafe Chinese products “very closely,” with an additional 40% following it “somewhat closely” – an overall high level of attention.

A once drug-addled elephant fed heroin-laced bananas by illegal traders will soon return to the wild after being weaned off his addiction through methadone and round-the-clock care. “Big Brother", a bull elephant that once “lived peacefully” with his herd near the China-Myanmar border in Yunnan province, was caught by traders in 2005, the China Daily said on Thursday. “To control it so that it could lead the herd to where they wanted, the traders kept feeding it bananas laced with drugs,” the paper said. The traders, however, were caught trying to sell Big Brother and his herd after a tip-off to forest police. By that time Big Brother had developed a raging heroin addiction and posed a danger to people if denied its fix, the paper said, citing police.

Industrial Nanotech, Inc., an emerging global leader in nanotechnology, has announced that it is now in the development stage of creating a thermal insulation material that will generate electricity. The company says it is now designing the first prototype material and filing the patents necessary. According to Stuart Burchill, CEO of Industrial Nanotech, Inc.: “The benefit of a thin sheet of thermal insulation that could be used in the walls of commercial buildings and in walls and attics of houses, instead of just helping conserve energy could create energy, is incalculable. The fact that there is almost always, day or night and anywhere in the world, a difference between the temperature inside a building and outside a building gives us an almost constant source of energy generation to tap into.”

August 30, 1885: Gottlieb Daimler patents what is generally considered to be the first true motorcycle. Daimler, the automotive pioneer usually associated with building the world’s first successful internal combustion engine (and, subsequently, the first automobile), staked his claim of priority in the two-wheeler world a year before developing his famous auto. However, the idea of a motor-driven, two-wheeled vehicle did not originate with Daimler, nor was his the first such contraption to see the road. Sylvester Roper, who spent the U.S. Civil War working in a Union armory, built a primitive “motorcycle” as early as 1867. Roper’s supporters – and he has more than a few – argue that he should be credited with building the world’s first motorcycle. What gives credibility to Daimler’s claim of developing the first “true” motorcycle is the fact that it was gasoline-driven. Roper’s post-Civil War hog, with a tiny two-cylinder engine, was powered by steam.

“Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.”

When two people walk up to a food counter at the same time when there are two main courses left, one person gets a choice and the other has their dinner predetermined - if they choose to take the remaining dish and use their free will to give up their free will to choose dinner that evening. They could have easily used free will to go somewhere else, but that doesn’t change the fact that the decision at that particular counter was predetermined. Whether the predeterminism occurred a millisecond or a week before arrival at that counter is irrelevant, because it doesn’t change the outcome. Our past is determined, and our future has a probability-based predetermination dependent upon each individual’s determined experiential frame of reference.

Recent reports by the FBI and the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command show that gang-related activity in the U.S. military is increasing. The FBI report concludes the increase poses a threat to law enforcement officials and national security. Some experts point to looser recruiting standards, implemented in recent years as the Army struggles to meet recruiting goals, and the increase in waivers given to recruits with criminal records as a factor behind gang presence in the ranks. Each year since 2003, an increasing number of applicants with records of everything from traffic violations to felony convictions have been allowed to enlist in the Army under “moral waivers.” In fiscal 2006, 7.9 percent of all recruits received moral waivers, compared with 4.6 percent in 2003, according to Recruiting Command.

Global warming may carry a higher risk of flooding than previously thought, according to a study released on Wednesday by the British science journal Nature. It says efforts to calculate flooding risk from climate change do not take into account the effect that carbon dioxide (CO2) — the principal greenhouse gas — has on vegetation. Plants suck water out of the ground and “breathe” out the excess through tiny pores, called stomata, in their leaves. Stomata are highly sensitive to CO2. The higher the level of atmospheric CO2, the more the pores tighten up or open for shorter periods. As a result, less water passes through the plant and into the air in the form of evaporation. And, in turn, this means that more water stays on the land, eventually running off into rivers when the soil becomes saturated.

What happens when you breed a helicopter with a two-wheeler? You get a motorcycle with all-wheel drive. Philadelphia-based Christini has begun to market a drivetrain that can apply power from the engine to the front wheel of motorcycles. A second chain turns the front wheel so that riders can get through sand, snow, mud or uneven terrain more easily. “I love it. It is a total advantage,” said Mike Bergman, a professional motocross racer who’s raced twice on motorcycles equipped with Christini’s drivetrain. “Let’s say you come into a rough corner with deep ruts, it will pull you right around it.” Christini recently released a version of its drivetrain for some Honda dirt bikes and will soon have a unit that works with off-road motorcycles from KLM. Over the next few years, it hopes to move from selling its system as an aftermarket device to something that is integrated into a motorcycle at a much lower cost at the factory.

A team of U.S. researchers has found a new and inexpensive way to create a nanowire coating for titanium surfaces used in bone implants. Their nanowire scaffolds can be used ‘to create more effective surfaces for hip replacement, dental reconstruction and vascular stenting.’ As said the lead researcher, ‘We can control the length, the height, the pore openings and the pore volumes within the nanowire scaffolds’ by varying the time, temperature and alkali concentration in the reaction,’ who added that the process was also extremely sustainable, requiring only that the device be rinsed in reusable water after the heating process. These nanowire scaffolds might also be used in hospitals or in meat-processing plants to kill bacteria.

Even years after quitting, former smokers still have an increased risk of lung cancer – and now Canadian scientists believe they know why. It appears that though most smoking damage is repaired over time, the habit appears to permanently alter the activity of key genes. Dr. Stephen Lam, chair of the B.C. Cancer Agency’s lung tumour group, says the findings may explain why 50 per cent of Canadian patients with newly diagnosed lung cancer are former smokers. Researchers from the B.C. Cancer Agency, writing in the journal BMC Genomics, looked at the lung tissue of 24 current, former, and non-smokers. Using a technique called serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE), they identified close to 600 genes that were differentially expressed between current and non-smokers. Only about a fifth of the genes in a cell are switched on at any given time, but environmental factors such as smoking lead to changes in gene activity. Of the 600 genes identified, changes in almost one third of them are irreversible in former smokers, the researchers found. Specifically, some DNA repair genes are irreversibly damaged by smoking. Smoking also switched off genes that help combat lung cancer development.

Ever wonder why you can’t seem to get anything done in the office? It may be because your co-workers are preoccupied with something other than work. “Workplace Taboos” is a new CareerBuilder.com survey, conducted by Harris Interactive of more than 5,700 workers. The most common workplace taboos that workers admitted to taking part in include:
– Falling asleep at work (45 percent)
– Kissing a co-worker (39 percent)
– Consuming alcoholic beverages while on the job (21 percent)
– Stealing from the office (22 percent)
– Spreading a rumor about a co-worker (22 percent)
– Snooping after hours (18 percent)
– Lying about an academic background (4 percent)
– Taking credit for someone else’s work (2 percent)
Who is most likely to commit workplace taboos?
Men report that they engage in all of these workplace taboos more than women. For instance, nearly half (49 percent) of men have fallen asleep on the job compared 35 percent of women. When it comes to kissing co-workers, 44 percent of men and 34 percent of women admitted to puckering up.

Calving Alaskan glaciers have attracted more than the regular tourists and concerned climate scientists this summer — they’ve also brought some pioneering surfers. The surfers’ goal is to ride the swift, icy dwarf tsunamis that are launched by the calving ice in the pursuit of the biggest waves ever ridden. The waves created by the falling walls of ice near what’s known as the Million Dollar Bridge, near Cordova, Alaska, have been seen as tall 30 feet along the river banks. They have been clocked heading downstream as fast as 40 miles per hour and almost standing still relative to shore as they move upstream against the current, said Ryan Casey of Deepwater Films. Casey is developing a documentary about the strange glacial surf.

PETER Beattie, Nicole Kidman and Michael Voss are. So were William Shakespeare, Christopher Columbus and Queen Elizabeth the First. But the future doesn’t look bright for people with ginger hair. According to genetic scientists redheads are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years. The current National Geographic magazine reports that less than 2 per cent of the world’s population has natural red hair - created by a mutation in northern Europe thousand of years ago. Global intermingling, which broadens the availability of possible partners, has reduced the chances of redheads meeting and so producing little redheads of their own. Although it takes only one red-haired parent to produce ginger babies, two redheads obviously creates a much stronger possibility. Some experts warn redheads could be gone as early 2060, but others say the gene can be dormant in the reproductive system for generations before returning.

The use of renewable energy in the United States increased nearly 7% in 2006, according to preliminary statistics released on August 21st by DOE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA). The new report finds wind power to be the fastest growing renewable energy technology, growing by 45% in 2006, followed by biofuels, which grew by 27.6%. In 2006, ethanol provided 4% of the volume of finished gasoline produced in the United States while consuming 14% of the nation’s corn crop. Hydropower production also increased by 6.9% in 2006, reaching its highest level since 2003, but it remained below the high-water years of the late 1990s.

Shrubs far outgrew native grasses in Colorado rangeland when exposed to elevated levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), according to a study published by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and cooperators at Colorado State University. The results suggest that rising CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere may be contributing to shifts in plant community dynamics, in which woody vegetation is favored over perennial forage grasses. The study will be published in this week’s online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Is heading straight for a goal the quickest way there? If the name of the game is evolution, suggests new research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, the pace might speed up if the goals themselves change continuously. Nadav Kashtan, Elad Noor and Prof. Uri Alon of the Institute’s Molecular Cell Biology and Physics of Complex Systems Departments create computer simulations that mimic natural evolution, allowing them to investigate processes that, in nature, take place over millions of years. In these simulations, a population of digital genomes evolves over time towards a given goal: to maximize fitness under certain conditions. Evolution takes place under changing environmental conditions, forcing organisms to continually readapt. Intuitively, this would slow things down even further, as successive generations must switch tack again and again in the struggle to survive. But when Kashtan, Noor and Alon created a simulation in which the goals changed repeatedly, they found that its evolution actually speeded up. They even found that the more complex the goal – i.e., the more generations needed reach it under fixed conditions – the faster evolution accelerated in response to changes in that goal. Computerized evolution ran fastest, the scientists found, when the changes followed a pattern they believe may be pervasive in nature.

Scientists at the University of Bern, Switzerland, determined that spiders use these scuba tanks, called air bells, as reservoirs, monitoring and replenishing oxygen levels to enable the animals to live underwater. “The water spider’s air bell is in some ways working like an external lung,” said study co-author Michael Taborsky. Found in ponds throughout northern and central Europe, the water spider is the only spider that spends its entire life underwater. Since the small brown arachnids are air breathers, they have adapted the air bell system to gather oxygen from the atmosphere. The air bell serves multiple purposes, said Paul Selden, a professor of invertebrate paleontology at the University of Kansas who was not involved in the study. “[The water spider] uses this air bell as a place to live away from terrestrial predators and as a safe nest in which to keep her eggs and tend the young spiderlings,” Selden said. It is also used as a safe harbor for consuming prey and breeding. Using short hairs on their abdomens and legs, water spiders trap air bubbles from the water’s surface, which they then carry back to specially designed underwater reservoirs spun from silk, the recent study found.

A stray cat relieving itself inside a Marikina City bank drew a police squad after the animal tripped the bank’s burglar alarm late Monday. Members of the Marikina City Police Station were dispatched to the Bank of the Philippine Islands after repeatedly receiving alarm signals around 11 p.m. Monday. With the bank closed and the bank manager’s mobile phone unreachable, the policemen used a ladder to inspect the bank’s roof and saw a small hole, which they thought was a sign of “forced entry.” The policemen became even more suspicious after a peek through the tinted glass doors revealed a collapsed ceiling.

Like the GPS-enabled school uniforms we wrote about earlier this month, the notion of bulletproof backpacks for students is sure to provoke mixed reaction. Some people will call the invention an overreaction, while others will view it as a wise protective gadget. It’s sad–and sobering–to think that a bulletproof backpack could prove a practical back-to-school purchase, but it’s not so far-fetched an idea in these days of campus violence. MJ Safety Solutions, a Massachusetts company run by three dads, has developed what it says is the first full-size, lightweight ballistic protection backpack that’s affordable and practical for kids. The $175 My Child’s Pack contains a 20-ounce bulletproof panel that the creators say can ward off 97 percent of bullets. The packs can be used to offer upper torso coverage on the back or as a shield for frontal protection of the head and upper body.

1845: Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States, makes its debut. Founded by Rufus Porter, a prolific inventor as well as a pretty fair painter and the scion of a wealthy New England family, Scientific American was originally printed as a single-page newsletter with a demonstrated liking for news coming out of the U.S. Patent Office.

As China enters the mosquito rampaging season of Autumn, many people in Shanghai, in order to avoid bites and sleepless nights, have downloaded a special mobile phone software which claims to be able to make cell phones emit mosquito repellent waves. About 1,000 people in a surveyed website downloaded the free software which later most of them found did not repel mosquitoes, some users also claimed to have suffered from severe headaches the next morning. But there are others who support the mosquito repellent software, saying it works. A reporter from enet.com.cn interviewed an expert, Xu Renquan from the Shanghai Municipal Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. Doctor Xu said that they had made similar experiments, such as affixing mosquito repellent wave equipment to watches and other accessories. But the results are never good or worthwhile pursuing. In addition, mosquitoes in different regions and areas have different features, the same mosquito repellent software would have obvious limitations.

A Chinese wife has cut her husband’s right hand off because of his internet addiction. Jiang Ming of Chengdu city promised his wife, He Ling, that he would not go on the internet anymore and would spend more time at home to take care of their newborn son. But after a short time he started to sneak into nearby internet cafes again to have video chats with girls. “I was on the internet, and suddenly felt a numbness in my right hand. The arrow on the screen stopped moving,” says Jiang Ming. “Then I found that my right hand was on the mouse pad, and blood was shooting out.” In court, the husband pleaded with the judge to release his wife, since he was to blame for breaking his promise.

High stress levels may contribute to memory loss among people at risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease. The e4 variant of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene contributes to the risk for memory loss related to Alzheimer’s disease. Similarly, high circulating levels of cortisol, associated with high stress levels, also impairs memory. However, the interactive effects of this risk genotype and chronic stress are not well understood, so a new study being published in the September 1st issue of Biological Psychiatry was designed to explore this relationship. In their study, Peavy and colleagues performed genotyping and measured the chronic stress level in 91 older, healthy subjects (mean age was 78.8 years). Those low on stress or without the APOE-e4 risk factor performed better on memory measures than those with high stress or those positive for APOE-e4, respectively. Those individuals experiencing high stress and who were positive for APOE-e4 showed the greatest memory impairment.

“There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.”

August 27th. The automobile was only a few years old when drivers began to get into trouble for speeding. The first known speeding ticket was issued to cab driver Jacob German in 1899 in New York City, cited by a policeman on a bicycle for driving at the breakneck speed of 12 miles an hour on Lexington Avenue. His license and registration were not confiscated, because neither were required until two years later. Across the nation, more than 100,000 people a day receive speeding tickets. The average citation costs $150 and often, a hefty increase in insurance rates. Nearly 43,000 people die each year in traffic accidents in the U.S. In more than 13,000 of these cases, speed is a factor in the accident.

Call it a new type of fishing “net": studying the ocean by connecting the seafloor to the Internet. The first step of NEPTUNE, a joint U.S.-Canadian effort to create the world’s first regional cabled ocean observatory, was made last week when the French ship Ile de Sein laid down submarine fiber-optic cables in the Pacific Ocean. Fiber-optic cables can transmit more data at a faster pace than other technologies. The Canadian section of the observatory, supported by the University of Victoria in Canada, will be built off the west coast of Vancouver Island. NEPTUNE Canada will connect hundreds of oceanographic instruments to the Internet by way of a 500-mile (800-kilometer) long fiber-optic cable that encircles the northern Juan de Fuca tectonic plate. The plate, which is named after a Greek explorer, is sliding under the western side of the North American plate. The instruments include underwater microphones that will “eavesdrop on the ocean"; sensors that will monitor nutrient levels; and various video cameras, wave sensors, and seismometers.

For the first time, organo-sulfur compounds found in garlic have been identified as effective against glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor equivalent to a death sentence within a short period after diagnosis. Researchers studied three pure organo-sulfur compounds (DAS, DADS, and DATS) from garlic and the interaction with human glioblastoma cells. All three compounds demonstrated efficacy in eradicating brain cancer cells, but DATS proved to be the most effective. The study will be published in the September issue of the American Cancer Society’s journal, Cancer. Cancer cells have a high metabolism and require much energy for rapid growth. In this study, garlic compounds produced reactive oxygen species in brain cancer cells, essentially gorging them to death with activation of multiple death cascades.

Perfect pitch, the ability to identify the absolute pitch of musical notes, looks to be the product of a small number of genes, according to a new University of California study. Many traits, such as high blood pressure or height, have genetic links but span a broad spectrum with relatively few people having extreme measurements. But with perfect pitch, also called absolute pitch, a person either has it or doesn’t, according to UC researchers in San Francisco and Los Angeles. “This striking, bimodal distribution resolves the question of whether absolute pitch ability lies in the tail of a continuous perceptual spectrum or, rather, defines a distinct perceptual trait,” the researchers said. Judging by the fact that most people score either very well or very poorly, though, the researchers suggest that “AP ability could be governed by the influence of only one or a few genes.” Perfect pitch may seem an amazing gift, but as the study authors point out, the visual equivalent isn’t. Humans generally are pretty good at identifying the frequency of light they’re seeing with a color label. Although perfect pitch appears to be a genetic trait, early exposure to music or musical training appears to influence its development in those with the right DNA.

More than 130 veterans of the Iraq war now face the daunting challenge of learning to live with a missing arm. To make that transition easier, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, has launched a $55-million project that pools the efforts of prosthetics experts nationwide to create a thought-controlled bionic arm that duplicates the functions of a natural limb. If all goes well, by 2009 the agency will petition the Food and Drug Administration to put the arm through clinical trials. This summer the team hit a critical milestone when it finished Proto 2, a thought-controlled mechanical arm—complete with hand and articulated fingers—that can perform 25 joint motions. This dexterity approaches that of a native arm, which can make 30 motions, and trumps the previously most agile bionic arm, the Proto 1, which could bend at the elbow, rotate its wrist and shoulder, and open and close its fingers. A person wearing a Proto 2 could conceivably play the piano. The next steps are to shrink the battery, develop more-efficient motors, and refine the bulky electrodes used to read electrical signals in muscles.

Picture a beautiful beach spanning miles of coastline, gently lapped by aqua-colored water - and sprinkled with glass. Ouch? Think again. It feels just like sand, but with granules that sparkle in the sunlight. Faced with the constant erosion of Florida’s beaches, Broward County officials are exploring using recycled glass - crushed into tiny grains and mixed with regular sand - to help fill gaps. It’s only natural, backers of the idea say, since sand is the main ingredient in glass. “Basically, what we’re doing is taking the material and returning it back to its natural state,” said Phil Bresee, Broward’s recycling manager. The county would become the first in the nation to combine disposal of recycled glass with bolstering beach sand reserves, Bresee said. “You reduce waste stream that goes to our landfills and you generate materials that could be available for our beaches,” said Paden Woodruff of the state Department of Environmental Protection.

The first observance of Labor Day is believed to have been a parade of 10,000 workers on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City, organized by Peter J. McGuire, a Carpenters and Joiners Union secretary. By 1893, more than half the states were observing a “Labor Day” on one day or another, and Congress passed a bill to establish a federal holiday in 1894. President Grover Cleveland signed the bill soon afterward – designating the first Monday in September as Labor Day.

Loosen the belt buckle another notch America: Obesity rates continued their climb in 31 states last year. No state showed a decline. Mississippi became the first state to crack the 30% barrier for adult residents considered to be obese. West Virginia and Alabama are just slightly behind, according to the Trust for America’s Health, a research group that focuses on disease prevention. Colorado continued its reign as the leanest state in the nation with an obesity rate projected at 17.6%. This year’s report, for the first time, looked at obesity rates among children ages 10 to 17. The District of Columbia had the highest percentage – 22.8%. Utah had the lowest percentage of obese youth – 8.5%.

Gallup’s annual Work and Education survey finds that American workers report spending an average of 46 minutes commuting to and from work in a typical day. Workers at higher income levels and those who work at least 40 hours per week tend to have longer commutes than others. The vast majority of workers say their commute is not that stressful, but workers who travel at least an hour each day are much more likely than those who travel less than that to say their commute is stressful.

The risk of massive defaults on subprime mortgages and heavy debts now poses a bigger threat to U.S. economic prosperity than terrorism, a panel of U.S. business economists said on Monday. “The combined threat of subprime loan defaults and excessive indebtedness has supplanted terrorism and the Middle East as the biggest short-term threat to the U.S. economy,” the National Association for Business Economics said. The conclusion was based on a survey of 258 NABE members conducted between July 24 and Aug. 14 and updates one done in March. Only 20% of members said terrorism was now their top concern, compared with 35% in March. “Meanwhile, 18% of those surveyed pointed to the effects of the subprime debacle as their biggest concern, and the related issue of ‘excessive household and/or corporate debt’ was cited by another 14%,” NABE said.

An early warning system to detect and possibly prevent asthma attacks is being developed by investigators from the University of Pittsburgh: Researchers led by Alexander Star, a chemistry professor in Pitt’s School of Arts and Sciences, created a sensor reactive to even minute amounts of nitric oxide, a gas prevalent in the breath of asthmatics, as they describe in the Aug. 22 online edition of the journal “Nanotechnology.” Star also will present his research at the American Chemical Society’s 234th National Meeting slated for Aug. 19-23 in Boston. The sensor consists of a carbon nanotube-a rolled, one-atom thick sheet of graphite 100,000 times smaller than a human hair-coated with a polyethylene imine polymer. Star cased the sensor in a hand-held device that people blow into to determine the nitric oxide content of their breath. The nitric oxide level in the breath of a person with asthma spikes as the airways grow more inflamed. High levels-perhaps two-thirds over normal-may precede an attack by one to three weeks, but possibly earlier depending on the asthma’s severity.

Blood and sweat could power a battery that looks just like a piece of paper, scientists say. “It’s flexible, it can be shaped or folded, you can poke a hole in it and it still works,” says chemist Robert Linhardt, a member of the research team that developed the new battery, which is made from paper and carbon nanotubes. He works at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. Regular AA batteries, like the ones in your camera, use battery acid to produce a current. But the new paper battery can run on blood or sweat. That means it might ultimately be used to power medical devices like hearing aids or pacemakers. “It could be easily implanted directly under the skin,” unlike metal batteries, which are less flexible, Linhardt says.

1859: Drillers strike oil near Titusville, Pennsylvania. It becomes the first commercially viable oil well in the United States, the prototype for future oil well construction, and marks the birth of the U.S. petroleum industry. That the land around Crawford County held plenty of oil was already well-known. What was lacking was an effective method for extracting the crude and getting it to market. Enter Edwin Drake, who had spent the previous decade locating oil deposits in the area for the Seneca Oil Company. Frustrated by the limitations of existing methods of extraction, as well as problems with water seepage, Drake decided on a departure from the usual trench-digging technology. He turned to the methods used by salt-well drillers, which involved sinking a shaft straight to the source while providing more structural integrity. He also devised the drive pipe, made of segmented cast iron, as a boring tool.

Some companies pay millions to have their logos on Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s racecar, but others prefer to pay Brian Katz $500 or more a month for space on his Ford Expedition. Mr. Katz, 32, of Manhattan, is one of the tens of thousands of motorists who have signed up to have their cars and trucks wrapped in advertisements in exchange for a stipend up to $800 a month. These offers are becoming so popular that car owners have been willing to limit where they shop and abide by a code of conduct while they are behind the wheel.

Scientists in France and Italy have deciphered the complete genetic code for the plant producing wine grapes, according to a study published Sunday. While the findings will do nothing to enhance the mystique of winemaking, they could pave the way for gene-based manipulations to boost flavour and improve resistance against disease. Dozens of researchers analyzing the Pinot Noir varietal of Vitis vinifera, the core species from which virtually all grape wine is made, found twice as many genes contributing to aroma than in other sequenced plants, suggesting that wine flavours could be traced to the genome level. The French-Italian Public Consortium for Grapevine Genome Characterisation, which collectively authored the study, also gained crucial insights into the genetic evolution of plants over the last 200 million of years.

From September 2006 to April 2007, the percentage of Americans in cellphone-only households for the first time overtook the percentage in landline-only households, according to Mediamark Research, a firm that has been tracking such data since the mid-1980s. The milestone is a natural consequence of two trends: a glacially slow decline since 2000 in the percentage of households with landlines, and a steep rise in the number of households with cellphones. Mediamark said 84.5 percent of households now have landlines, and 86.2 percent have at least one cellphone. The data was collected through in-home surveys at roughly 13,000 homes across the country.

“Integrating a high-quality film of silicon nanoparticles 1 nanometer in size directly onto silicon solar cells improves power performance by 60 percent in the ultraviolet range of the spectrum,” said Munir Nayfeh, a physicist at the University of Illinois and corresponding author of a paper accepted for publication in Applied Physics Letters. A 10 percent improvement in the visible range of the spectrum can be achieved by using nanoparticles 2.85 nanometers in size, said Nayfeh, who also is a researcher at the university’s Beckman Institute. In conventional solar cells, ultraviolet light is either filtered out or absorbed by the silicon and converted into potentially damaging heat, not electricity. In previous work, however, Nayfeh showed that ultraviolet light could efficiently couple to correctly sized nanoparticles and produce electricity. That work was reported in the August 2004 issue of the journal Photonics Technology Letters.

A new study shows that some types of bacteria can sense light, and that exposing one type of disease-causing bacterium–the Brucella bacterium–to light increases its capacity to infect humans and livestock. This study represents the first time that light has been shown to play a role in bacterial virulence (infection). Brucella bacteria “have been very well studied for years, and no one knew they could sense light,” said Trevor Swartz of the University of California, Santa Cruz, the study’s lead author. “And now it seems like it’s a common thing rather than being an anomaly.” The study, which was partially funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and conducted by an international team of scientists, is described in the August 24 issue of Science.

Fortunately, the boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis), which devastated U.S. cotton crops for much of the 20th century, is now found only in parts of the mid-South and South Texas, thanks to eradication efforts. But monitoring weevils to keep track of where they are coming from—and where they’re going—is vital for protecting cotton crops in the United States. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) entomologist Tom Sappington works in the ARS Corn Insects and Crop Genetics Research Unit at Ames, Iowa. He has tracked local weevil movements by marking the insects with enamel paint or fluorescent powders and recapturing them later. Now he uses “microsatellites”—short, repetitive DNA sequences—and population assignment tests to find out where weevils in different populations have come from. These tests help pinpoint the migratory patterns and origins of boll weevils over long distances.

New findings from insect studies at Queen¡¯s and U of T may help to protect our brains from extremely high fevers that sometimes trigger seizures, particularly in infants and small children. While the seizures themselves are generally harmless, a prolonged fever resulting from infection or heatstroke of over 108¢ªF (42¢ªC) can eventually lead to respiratory distress, cognitive dysfunction, brain damage, or death. The research suggests that manipulation of a single gene or genetic pathway in fruit flies and locusts will rapidly protect the nervous system from failure due to extreme heat stress. ¡°We¡¯ve been studying neuro-protective mechanisms in these model systems for more than a decade, and were amazed by the speed and potency of this treatment,¡± says senior researcher Mel Robertson, head of Biology at Queen¡¯s. The findings are published on-line today in the journal PLoS ONE (Public Library of Science ONE).

People who live to 100 or more are known to have just as many—and sometimes even more—harmful gene variants compared with younger people. Now, scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have discovered the secret behind this paradox: favorable “longevity” genes that protect very old people from the bad genes’ harmful effects. The novel method used by the researchers could lead to new drugs to protect against age-related diseases. The Einstein researchers were able to construct a network of gene interactions that contributes to the understanding of longevity. In particular, they found that the favorable variant of the gene CETP acts to buffer the harmful effects of the disease-causing gene Lp(a). If future research finds that a single longevity gene buffers against several disease-causing genes, then drugs that mimic the action of the longevity gene could help protect against cardiovascular disease and other age-related diseases.

A California researcher says Los Angeles is in the midst of a 1,000-year seismic lull characterized by relatively small and infrequent earthquakes. The report, published in the September issue of Geology, suggests seismic activity alternates between the Los Angeles basin and the Mojave Desert, which is in a seismically active period. James Dolan, associate professor of earth sciences at the University of Southern California, said the Northridge earthquake of 1994 was a drop in the bucket compared to the massive jolts that would strike the basin during a period of high seismic activity. The past 1,000 years has been relatively quiet, Dolan said Friday in a release.

Steve Arms started by designing sensors that could be arthroscopically implanted to measure strain on knee ligaments. These days, Arms and his company, MicroStrain Inc., are experimenting with wireless sensing technology that could play a bigger role in assessing the condition of bridges after one in Minneapolis collapsed two weeks ago, killing at least nine people. The wireless, solar-powered sensor system can provide data on strain, seismic activity and vibrations on bridges, eliminating the need to manually replace batteries once the sensors are installed in hard-to-access places. Already in place on the Corinth Canal Bridge in Greece and an Interstate 95 bridge in New London, Conn., the sensors harvest energy from the sun using 6-by-9-inch photovoltaic panels. The panels are linked to rechargeable batteries and power microelectronic modules that record data from inside watertight enclosures. The data is transmitted to computers via wireless connections.

DNA, the molecule that carries life’s blueprint, is being used to control the size of nanoparticles and the speed at which they form. Learning how to tailor their assembly could lead to the creation of nanoparticles for more efficient energy generation, data storage and drug delivery systems, among other uses. Mathew Maye, a chemist in Brookhaven National Laboratory’s new Center for Functional Nanomaterials, presented the findings yesterday at the 234th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston. “We can synthesize nanoparticles with very well-controlled optical, catalytic, and magnetic properties,” Maye said. “They are usually free-flowing in solution, but for use in a functional device, they have to be organized in three dimensions, or on surfaces, in a well-controlled manner. That’s where self-assembly comes into play. We want the particles to do the work themselves.” Using optical measurements, transmission electron microscopy, and x-ray scattering at Brookhaven’s National Synchrotron Light Source, Maye and his colleagues have shown how to control the self-assembly of gold nanoparticles with the help of various types of DNA.

The University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, has developed some face-transforming software that allows people to change the age, sex, or ethnicity of the person in an image that you export from your computer. Or, blend features from a number of faces into one amalgam. If all that is too creepy, then just import art or animal images and morph them.

Safer, more predictable warfarin therapy could come from pretreatment genotyping to individualize dosing, investigators reported. Combining data on polymorphisms for two genes with clinical variables resulted in an algorithm that accounted for 79% of the variability in therapeutic dose in orthopedics patients, Brian F. Gage, M.D., of Washington University here, and colleagues reported online and in the Sept. 1 issue of Blood. “Ultimately, with further validation and refinement, this pharmacogenetic model should yield a streamlined approach to refining the dose and improving the safety and efficiency of warfarin initiation,” the authors concluded. Marked variation in individual dosing requirements and a narrow therapeutic index have long complicated the use of warfarin. Doses that are too high or too low increase the risk of potentially serious adverse events, including fatal bleeding.

Government agents may soon find valuable information through an online-recommendation system like the one on Amazon.com: Spies who read this report, it might say, also found these reports useful. That is one of several features the Office of the Director of National Intelligence might borrow from mainstream technology as it designs its new Web-based information-sharing system. The DNI is working on a new system intended to “tunnel through” the 16 different intelligence-gathering agencies in hopes of streamlining data sharing, said Michael Wertheimer, DNI’s assistant deputy director for analytic transformation and technology. The system, called A-Space, will only be open to those cleared to use it and is scheduled to go live in December. The DNI said it was taking its cues from social networking sites, Web-based mail, online maps and other commonly used online tools. Next month, it will take its concepts to a conference in Chicago, where universities, tech companies and other government agencies will be invited to scrutinize the project. “This is a revolutionary concept for us,” Wertheimer said. “This is unlike any other technology we’ve created.” This is not the government’s first attempt to imitate consumer technology. Last year, inspired by the popular user-generated encyclopedia Wikipedia, the government launched Intellipedia, an internal site aimed at information exchange in the intelligence community.

AT&T is paying millions to be the exclusive United States provider of Apple’s much-hyped and glowingly reviewed gadget, the iPhone. It took 17-year-old George Hotz two months of work to undermine AT&T’s investment. Mr. Hotz, a resident of Glen Rock, N.J., published detailed instructions online this week that he says will let iPhone owners abandon AT&T’s service and use their phones on some competing cellular networks. Mr. Hotz’s method, which requires a soldering gun, a steady hand and a set of obscure software tools, is one of several techniques that have emerged over the last week to break the technological locks confining the iPhone to AT&T’s network. “This was about opening up the device for everyone,” Mr. Hotz said in an interview over his iPhone, which he was using on the network of T-Mobile, a rival to AT&T. Last fall, the Librarian of Congress issued an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, ruling that people can legally unlock their cellphones. But the ruling does not specifically apply to people like Mr. Hotz and the iPhoneSimFree group who distribute the unlocking tools.

Former US astronaut Lisa Nowak on Friday came face-to-face in court with the romantic rival she is accused of attacking after allegedly driving half-way across the United States wearing diapers. And in testimony that raised eyebrows in the courtroom, a police officer said Nowak had told him she had used the soiled baby diapers he found in the back of her car to avoid making too many stops on her long drive from Texas to Orlando, Florida. Nowak, whose bizarre saga has earned her nicknames such as “astronutty,’ asked the court to remove the monitoring bracelet she has to wear pending her September 24 trial. But the woman she allegedly attacked and plotted to kidnap testified that she is still scared of her.

Where would a good prostitute be without her (or his) signature platform shoes? In trouble, that’s where. The Aphrodite projects has taken steps to protect street-walkers with Platforms. The shoes have a built in audible alarm to scare off attackers, and when the alarm is triggered, the prostitute’s position is transmitted to either the police (in places where prostitution is legal) or to sex worker’s rights groups. The GPS unit uses APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System) a system which uses amateur radio frequencies to send data, which, ironically, was first developed at the United States Naval Academy (all the nice girls love a sailor).

So much for the meatball defense. A veteran counterterrorism detective’s claims that he flunked a drug test because his wife served him marijuana-spiked meatballs “simply weren’t credible,” and he has been fired by the New York Police Department, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said Thursday. With the dismissal, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly rejected an earlier recommendation by an administrative judge that the detective, Anthony Chiofalo, be reinstated. Kelly has final say on firings. An attorney for Chiofalo did not immediately respond to a telephone message seeking comment. Chiofalo, a 22-year-veteran assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, was suspended without pay in 2005 after a random drug test found marijuana in his system. The officer denied ever using drugs and demanded a hearing.

Rice University chemists have found a way to package some of nature’s most powerful radioactive particles inside DNA-sized tubes of pure carbon – a method they hope to use to target tiny tumors and even lone leukemia cells. “There are no FDA-approved cancer therapies that employ alpha-particle radiation,” said lead researcher Lon Wilson, professor of chemistry. “Approved therapies that use beta particles are not well-suited for treating cancer at the single-cell level because it takes thousands of beta particles to kill a lone cell. By contrast, cancer cells can be destroyed with just one direct hit from an alpha particle on a cell nucleus.” In the study, Wilson, Rice graduate student Keith Hartman, University of Washington (UW) radiation oncologist Scott Wilbur and UW research scientist Donald Hamlin, developed and tested a process to load astatine atoms inside short sections of carbon nanotubes. Because astatine is the rarest naturally occurring element on Earth – with less than a teaspoon estimated to exist in the Earth’s crust at any given time – the research was conducted using astatine created in a UW cyclotron.

A consortium of energy companies, working with the University of Texas at Austin, plans to research the use of nanotechnology to help produce oil and natural gas. The proposal came to light Thursday when the Justice Department announced it would not oppose the project on antitrust grounds. Nanotechnology involves the manufacture of materials at the nanometer scale — one one-billionth of a meter. A human hair is about 80,000 nano- meters wide. The joint venture partners, calling themselves the Advanced Energy Consortium, want to develop subsurface nanosensors that could be injected into oil and gas well bores. They believe the tiny nanosensors would migrate from the well hole into the pores of surrounding geological structures, collecting information producers could use to evaluate the potential of a reservoir. The partners are BP America, ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil Corp., Shell International E&P, Occidental Oil & Gas Corp., Halliburton Energy Services and Schlumberger Technology Corp., according to the Justice Department. UT’s Bureau of Economic Geology will manage the project. Each member will contribute $1 million a year for the first three years of the project to fund the research, according to information provided to the Justice Department by the consortium and quoted in the department’s response to the consortium’s lawyer. UT will conduct the research and will own any inventions resulting from the work, while the companies will have the right to make and sell any patented technology.

“Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”

“You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.”

“Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.”

“We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong.”

“Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.”

Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That’s got them scratching their heads about what’s just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That’s an expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday. Astronomers have known for many years that there are patches in the universe where nobody’s home. In fact, one such place is practically a neighbor, a mere 2 million light years away. But what the Minnesota team discovered, using two different types of astronomical observations, is a void that’s far bigger than scientists ever imagined. “This is 1,000 times the volume of what we sort of expected to see in terms of a typical void,” said Minnesota astronomy professor Lawrence Rudnick, author of the paper that will be published in Astrophysical Journal. “It’s not clear that we have the right word yet … This is too much of a surprise.”

The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time that telecommunications companies assisted the government’s warrantless surveillance program and were being sued as a result, an admission some legal experts say could complicate the government’s bid to halt numerous lawsuits challenging the program’s legality. “Under the president’s program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us,” Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said in an interview with the El Paso Times published Wednesday. His statement could help plaintiffs in dozens of lawsuits against the telecom companies, which allege that the companies participated in a wiretapping program that violated Americans’ privacy rights, former Justice Department officials said. Warrantless surveillance began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and was placed under supervision of a special court in January. An appeals court in San Francisco is weighing the government’s argument that these cases should be thrown out on the grounds that the subject matter is a “state secret” and that its disclosure would jeopardize national security. The government has repeatedly asserted that any relationship between the telecommunications firms and the National Security Agency’s spy program is classified. The firms’ alleged cooperation and other details of the program, government lawyers have argued, are so sensitive that they cannot be disclosed.

The reading skills of young male students may improve more when boys are tutored by women, a Canadian study shows, contradicting some school policies to hire male teachers to improve boys’ literacy. Herb Katz, an education professor at the University of Alberta, took 175 boys in the third and fourth grades, identified as struggling readers, and paired them with a research assistant who worked on their reading skills for 30 minutes a week over 10 weeks. On average, the boys paired with female tutors felt better about their reading skills after the 10 weeks than those who were coached by a male research assistant, the study found. Katz said the study, published in the U.S. journal Sex Roles, may prompt educational policy-makers in countries such as Australia and Britain to rethink directives that call for more male teachers to be hired to provide role models for boys whose reading skills lag their peers.

A judge will have to decide again whether a police officer can smell alcohol on a man’s breath from inside of a fast-food drive-through window. The prosecution believes Officer Kenneth Marrow can and did earlier this year. The attorney for 24-year-old Cody Schaaf disagrees and says the officer had no reasonable cause to stop Schaaf on suspicion of drunken driving. The stipulated trial Monday in Lancaster County Court centered on the arrest of Schaaf early in the morning of March 20. Sometime before 3 a.m., Schaaf ordered four cheeseburgers at a McDonald’s south of downtown Lincoln. As Schaaf’s car got to the pickup window, Schaaf was asked by a McDonald’s worker to pull ahead a few feet and wait for his food. The officer took the food to Schaaf’s car and eventually arrested him. Schaaf’s blood later tested out above the legal limit. A police spokeswoman said Wednesday that the officer had stopped at the restaurant because its managers had been reporting problems with drunken customers. Marrow testified during a hearing in July that Schaaf had bloodshot, watery eyes and that his speech was slurred. Marrow said he could smell alcohol coming from the car. But Mark Rappl, Schaaf’s lawyer, challenged Marrow’s account, doubting the officer could have detected the alcohol from inside the restaurant, seven feet from Schaaf.

AT&T Inc. will start sending iPhone customers thinner bills by default starting with their next billing cycle, the wireless carrier has told subscribers by text message. The change comes a week after blogs and forums lit up with tales of new iPhone owners receiving bills stretching scores, or even hundreds, of pages. Justine Ezarik, a graphic designer and blogger from Pittsburgh, became a temporary YouTube star for the video showing her unwrapping her first bill, a 300-page pile that listed every one of the estimated 30,000 to 35,000 text messages she sends each month.

A number of companies are trying to figure out ways to make cellulosic ethanol by breaking down sugar with microbes and enzymes. Sony has used similar principles to build a battery. In short, the anode of the battery consists of enzymes–a protein that speeds up chemical reactions in living organisms–which digest sugar while the cathode that breaks down oxygen. The two are connected by a membrane. The anodie extracts electrons and hydrogen. The hydrogen migrates through a membrane to the cathode side and makes water with the oxygen. Those loose electrons go to power your MP3 player or phone. Test batteries produced by Sony have managed to produce 50 milliwatts. The company even strung a bunch of them together to power an MP3 player. Sony presented a paper on it at the 234th American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition in Boston, one of the premier and longest running scientific conferences in the world.

Most lightbulbs create light with a pair electrodes. Luxim does it with radio waves. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based start-up has come up with a way to get rid of the parts inside of high intensity discharge (HID) lamps that are often the first to fail. As a result, Luxim’s LiFi (light fidelity) lamp provides more lumens per watt and lasts longer than competing products, according to the company. In traditional HID lamps, high voltage pulses pass between two electrodes. The energy creates plasma from the ambient gases trapped inside the bulb and you get light. The electrodes, however, degrade over time. Tungsten splatters off of them and blackens the surface of the bulb.
By contrast, the Luxim bulb doesn’t have electrodes. Instead, a radio frequency amplifier pumps RF waves to an antenna inside a resonant cavity. The interaction between the waves and the crystal cavity convert trapped gases into a plasma.