2007 January

In September, 2006, Nicole Brodeur did an excellent article for the Seattle Times. The story was about Sherri Peak and how her estranged husband stalked her. Ms. Peak’s privacy was violated with a hidden cell phone and a GPS tracking system. It is a frightening use of technology.
The part of the Brodeur article that jumped […]

Alex Eckelberry, the president of Sunbelt Software, has written an excellent article about the Julie Amero case. Alex writes:
“The machine was a haggard old system that was not adequately protected against these types of threats (Windows 98 running Internet Explorer 5 with only middling antivirus protection, no firewall, no antispyware program, no popup blocking and […]

Engineers at UC San Diego have built a powerful yet ultrathin digital camera by folding up the telephoto lens. This technology may yield lightweight, ultrathin, high resolution miniature cameras for unmanned surveillance aircraft, cell phones and infrared night vision applications.
“Our imager is about seven times more powerful than a conventional lens of the same […]

Carnegie Mellon University Chemical Engineers have devised a new process that can improve the efficiency of ethanol production, a major component in making biofuels a significant part of the U.S. energy supply.
Carnegie Mellon researchers have used advanced process design methods combined with mathematical optimization techniques to reduce the operating costs of corn-based bio-ethanol plants by […]

Smokers with a damaged insula - a region in the brain linked to emotion and feelings - quit smoking easily and immediately, according to a study in the Jan. 26 issue of the journal Science.
The study provides direct evidence of smoking’s grip on the brain.
It also raises the possibility that other addictive behaviors may have […]

In a breakthrough that could make fuel cells practical for such small machines as lawnmowers and chainsaws, researchers have developed a new mechanism to efficiently control hydrogen fuel cell power.
Many standard fuel cell designs use electronics to control power output, but such designs require complex systems to manage humidity and fuel recovery and recycling systems […]

The massive global challenge of storing digital data - storage needs reportedly double every year - may be met with a tiny yet powerful solution: magnetic particles just a few billionths of a meter across. This idea is looking better than ever now that researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and […]

Many people think they can safely drive while talking on their cell phones. Vanderbilt neuroscientists Paul E. Dux and Rene Marois have found that when it comes to handling two things at once, your brain, while fast, isn’t that fast.
“Why is it that with our incredibly complex and sophisticated brain, with 100 billion neurons processing […]

International time coordination is improving throughout the Americas thanks to a low-cost system relying on Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites and the Internet, which enables much faster time comparisons and gives small countries the opportunity to evaluate easily their measurements in relation to others and to world standards.
The time and frequency network of the Sistema […]

Obesity is one of the main risk factors for developing type II diabetes. Previous studies have shown that mice lacking a protein known as SH2B1 throughout their body are obese and develop diabetes. However, researchers from the University of Michigan have now shown that replacing SH2B1 only in the brain of these mice rescues them […]

A Sandia National Laboratories researcher has developed a simulation program designed to track the illicit trade in fissile and nonfissile radiological material well enough to predict who is building the next nuclear weapon and where they are doing it.
“By using a cluster analysis algorithm coded into a program,” says Sandia researcher David York. “I evaluated […]

As they eliminate tiny air bubbles that form when liquid droplets are molded into intricate circuits, a Princeton-led team is dissolving a sizable obstacle to the mass production of smaller, cheaper microchips.
Led by Stephen Chou, the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering at Princeton, the team worked to troubleshoot one form of nanoimprint lithography, a […]

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) is moving the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock today from seven to five minutes to midnight. Reflecting global failures to solve the problems posed by nuclear weapons and the climate crisis, the decision by the BAS Board of Directors was made in consultation with the Bulletin’s Board […]

In the family of Prussian blue, there is a compound that can act as a switch: it is not magnetic at the outset, but it can become magnetized by the effect of light and return to its initial state by heating. Researchers of the Institute of Molecular Chemistry and Materials of Orsay (CNRS/University of Paris […]

An injury to the brain can be devastating. When brain cells die, whether from head trauma, stroke or disease, a substance called glutamate floods the surrounding areas, overloading the cells in its path and setting off a chain reaction that damages whole swathes of tissue. Glutamate is always present in the brain, where it carries […]

It would seem that there is universal agreement that child pornography is evil. On the main page of FlyingHamster on January 15, 2007, there was a posting about the case of sixteen year old Matthew Brady:
“It sounds like a rite of passage - a high school boy looking at sexually explicit Web sites. So why […]

Today, Icebreaker Inc. announced the launch of Crush or Flush, the dating platform designed first and foremost for cell phones. Crush or Flush provides an easy way to flirt, chat, and meet real people with similar interests in your area - right from your cell phone. If you see a picture profile of someone […]

When Princeton University engineers want to increase the power output of their new fuel cell, they just give it a little more gas - hydrogen gas, to be exact. This simple control mechanism, which varies the flow of hydrogen fuel to control the power generated, was previously thought impossible and is a potentially major development […]

The phenomenon of ball lightning has vexed scientists for centuries. What is it? How does it happen? Is it even real? South American researchers may have gotten the ball rolling (forgive me) on our understanding of this rare occurrence.
Ball lightning could soon lose its status as a mystery, now that a team in Brazil […]

A hormone found naturally in the gut is the basis of a new drug to tackle obesity, one of three inaugural awards under the Wellcome Trust’s Seeding Drug Discovery initiative. The drug is being developed by one of the world’s leading obesity experts, Professor Steve Bloom at Imperial College London’s Hammersmith Hospital campus.
“Over 30,000 deaths […]