Reseize, the other newslog.

Mobile speech applications a la IBM

IBM has collaborated with two universities to develop several speech-enabled Web applications for mobile phones.
The MobileU program allows students to ask "What time is the next bus coming?" into their cell phones. Global Positioning Satellite devices inside the buses use GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) to transmit their location to servers on campus and ultimately to students' mobile phones to tell them how long they have to wait.The application, developed with Wake Forest University, uses IBM WebSphere Everyplace Multimodal Environment software.
With LaundryView, IBM built an application

on top of an existing Web application developed by the Mac-Gray, which provides laundry management services to schools.Students at Wake Forest living in special, tech-enabled facilities can ask any Internet-connected device how many washers and dryers are currently in use. As a result, they don't have to waste time walking to the laundry room to find out whether any machines are free.
Park and Pay-by-Cellphone, an application developed by IBM and USCB, is one of North America's first wireless parking systems that integrates a payment system.

Drivers call a phone number, enter the stall number and park. They can purchase additional parking time remotely by making another phone call. Parking fees are charged to their credit card. The new system tracks enforcement through a wireless network connecting 50 payment stations.
With the Personal Information Manager application, USCB students can ask their mobile phones what their e-mail inbox contains. It will also inform them audibly about their calendar entries and read them instant messages and newspaper articles as they walk to class or drive their cars. The application takes RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds from university and national newspapers and enters them into a speech-enabled Web browser. News is fed over standard Web protocols and dynamically formatted for speech input and output.

This was seized 4 u at Infoworld

Does China prepare to launch an alternate internet?

The Chinese government has announced plans to launch an alternate Internet root system with new Chinese character domains for dot-com and dot-net. This may mean that Chinese Internet users will no longer rely on ICANN, the U.S.-backed domain name administrator and that could be considered as the beginning of the end of the globally interoperable Internet.
The people's Daily writes:
China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII) has made adjustment to China's Internet domain name system in accordance with Article 6 of China Internet Domain Names Regulations. After the adjustment, ".MIL" will be added under the top-level domain (TLD) name of "CN".
A new Internet domain name system will take effect as of March 1 in China. Under the new system, besides "CN", three Chinese TLD names "CN", "COM" and "NET" are temporarily set. It means Internet users don't have to surf the Web via the servers under the management of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) of the United States.
The new regulations stipulate that under "CN", two types of second-level domain names, namely categorized domain names and those for administrative regions. There'll be seven categories: "AC" for research institutions; "EDU" for Chinese educational institutions; "GOV" for Chinese government departments and "MIL" for Chinese defense departments.
There'll be 34 domain names for the organizations of China's provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities directly under central government, and special administrative regions. They are mainly composed of the first letters of the Romanized spelling of the names of the regions, for example Beijing's domain name is "BJ" and Shanghai's is "SH".

This was seized 4 u at Slashdot & China's People's Daily

Yahoo! Collaborated With Chinese Govt. in Li Zhi Case

"Reporters Without Borders said it had obtained a copy of the court verdict against Li Zhi, a former official jailed for eight years in December 2003, confirming that US firm Yahoo! collaborated with the prosecution, as did local competitor, Sina.

"The Li Zhi verdict shows that all Internet sector companies are pulled in to help when the police investigate a political dissident,” the press freedom organisation said. “It is unacceptable that US firms should turn themselves into auxiliaries of a government that systematically tramples on the rights of Internet-users to freedom of expression,” it said." RSF continues saying that “Yahoo! should urgently withdraw its content and email servers from this country before further requests of this kind are made of it."

Sounds right, if it not were a sad joke. Please remember the US has its Patriot Act, which effectively forces companies like Yahoo! and Google to collaborate with the US government including a strict oder not to tell anyone that they are doing so. I bet China is no better than the US in this respect.

This was seized 4 u at www.rsf.org

'Rotating lock' lifts boats, links waterways

Falkirk, Scotland—Imagine a Ferris wheel with two gondolas. Picture the gondolas as water-filled boxes that move around a central axis like a two-chambered revolver. Together, these two images describe a radical new boat lock called the "Falkirk Wheel." More than two centuries ago, the east and west of Scotland were linked by the Forth and Clyde Canal. Later, the Union Canal was built to provide a connection to Edinburgh, Scotland's capital. The two canals met near here, but with a 35m difference in water levels, a flight of locks was needed to connect them. The canals fell into disuse a generation ago. Renewed as one of the British government's "Millennium Projects," the link between the canals is now being restored with the Falkirk Wheel replacing the original 11 locks. Falkirk Wheel bearing/gear arrangement The result is one of the most innovative engineering projects of the decade. The Falkirk Wheel's two gondolas each measure 22m long, and mount on wheels within steel rings supported by opposing arms 35m long. The arms rotate about a 3.8m diameter axle to carry the gondolas 180 degrees between the higher and lower levels. Each gondola accommodates a 4-boat, 300-ton payload, including the water.
Read more...

This was seized 4 u at Design News

Ancient Sun Temple Uncovered in Cairo

Have I mentioned that Zahi Hawass is my hero? --Steve
CAIRO, Egypt - Archaeologists discovered a pharaonic sun temple with large statues believed to be of King Ramses II under an outdoor marketplace in Cairo, Egypt's antiquities chief said Sunday. The partially uncovered site is the largest sun temple ever found in the capital's Aim Shams and Matariya districts, where the ancient city of Heliopolis — the center of pharaonic sun worship — was located, Zahi Hawass told The Associated Press. Among the artifacts was a pink granite statue weighing 4 to 5 tons whose features "resemble those of Ramses II," said Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. Also found was a 5-foot-high statue of a seated figure with hieroglyphics that include three cartouches with the name of Ramses II, and a 3-ton head of royal statue, the council said in a statement. The green pavement stones of the temple's floor were also uncovered. An Egyptian team working in cooperation with the German Archaeological Mission in Egypt discovered the site under the Souq al-Khamis, a popular market in eastern Cairo, Hawass said.
Read more...

This was seized 4 u at Yahoo! News

Multi-touch sensing devices - interactions on a graphical interaction surface.

While touch sensing is commonplace for single points of contact, multi-touch sensing enables a user to interact with a system with more than one finger at a time, as in chording and bi-manual operations. Such sensing devices are inherently also able to accommodate multiple users simultaneously, which is especially useful for larger interaction scenarios such as interactive walls and tabletops.

Since refining the FTIR (frustrated total internal reflection) sensing technique, Multi-Touch Interaction Research has been experimenting with a wide variety of application scenarios and interaction modalities that utilize multi-touch input information. These go far beyond the "poking" actions you get with a typical touchscreen, or the gross gesturing found in video-based interactive interfaces. "It is a rich area for research, and we are extremely excited by its potential for advances in efficiency, usability, and intuitiveness. It's also just so much fun!"
Look at the demo video and read more at Multi-Touch Interaction Research.

This was seized 4 u at Multi-Touch Interaction Research

Wireless system for public safety, emergency and disaster applications.

The development of a rapidly deployable interoperable communication system for future public safety is becoming increasingly important in today’s world. For any disaster relief operation requiring multinational efforts and rapid deployment a recently tested prototype communications network offers hope.

Fresh from a recent successful test-run of its system, the IST-funded project WIDENS has succeeded in developing a prototype network that could be quickly deployed in areas where there is no available communication infrastructure to support emergency or peacekeeping operations.
“There is a clear need for such a system,” remarks Dr Vania Conan, project coordinator for WIDENS. “In emergency and disaster relief applications, there is a demand for using video-images and cameras to help monitor the operations – for instance, infrared cameras mounted on the helmets of firefighters. WIDENS gives a new communication structure to firefighters and other emergency services

WIDENS gives a new communication structure to firefighters and other emergency services

Although more of an extreme case, rapid deployment of a communications infrastructure – after a large scale earthquake or flood for example – is not possible with present technology,” he says.
He noted that emergency crews currently use cellular-based digital communications that require a backbone network and provide limited throughput over long distances. The WIDENS network, by contrast, is composed of ‘terminodes’ – versatile software-defined radio communication nodes with mixed enhanced handset terminal and IP Router features for greater throughput.
“WIDENS complements existing systems with high bandwidth (2Mbit/s) over a dedicated emergency area of a few square kilometres,” he explains. “Higher throughput means the possibility to exchange large amounts of sensor data such as images for telemedicine applications, or to use video-surveillance. WIDENS is also straightforward to deploy in the field as there is no need to install any specific equipment such as aerials. The network sets up automatically.”

This was seized 4 u at Information Society Technologies

Track any mobile devices you want?

If your phone is on, it is technically possible to follow your every move

Your mobile phone is a beacon - a radio transmitter in a box. Therefore it is possible to trace the signal and work out where it is.There are now several web companies which will track your friends' and family's phones for you, so you always know where they are. But just how safe is it to make location details available online? There are several reasons why you may want to track someone. You may be a company wanting to keep tabs on employees during work hours, or a parent wanting to check up on a child's whereabouts. These sorts of tracking services, now available in the UK, get information from the network about which cell your phone is currently in, and, for a small fee, display the location on an online map. As well as checking where a certain phone is right now, you can run scheduled lookups, or snail trails, to record the phone's movements throughout the day, and produce a report for you to peruse at your leisure. Obviously you cannot just enter any mobile phone number and expect to track someone. First of all you need to prove your identity, via a credit card, and then, crucially, the owner of the phone in question needs to consent to being tracked. The owner is sent a text message telling them about the tracking request, to which they must reply. The question is: is it possible to circumvent this security, and track someone without their knowledge? <- Of course it is, read more...

This was written by Spencer Kelly seized 4 u at BBC

Musings on Battelle's Book

I just finished John Battelle's book The Search: How Google Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed our Culture and found it quite revealing. There is still a lot to learn for us regarding the way we can structure information on the web, make it useful and get people to pay for it.
Although the subtitle includes the requisite mention of Google, the book is really a much broader look at both the history of the web search industry and the profound effects and changes it is having on our social lives. Also, I like the way Battelle uses the web community as a source for discussing and updating issues discussed in the book (have a look on www.battellemedia.com).
Also, I found it very interesting and amusing to see how much luck there was (and is) involved in Google becoming a big media company and at the same time how reluctantly but inevitably Google now is starting to wander off into the irrelevancies of big business.

Molly Beanland - 2006 will be a year of rejoice for new popmusic.

"I have written many songs over the years but I always write about what is real to me. I see songs as moments rather than functions. I don't write to convey what I cannot say but to allow something beautiful or meaningful to have it's place, to mark it. Any one moment of fear, elation, sadness, empathy can transpire into a whirlwind of a song with many elements and underlying themes but all the time that first feeling holds it all together; because it is real. I look for the grain of truth in a song - a sense that the artist is giving something of themselves. I think we all do really, whatever type of music we like."

You have the chance to listen to her on March, 3 at The Vortex in London supporting Gwyneth Herbert.

This was seized 4 u at Molly Beanland

Mini robots to undertake major tasks?

The MICRON project team set out to build a total of five to ten micro robots, just cubic centimetres in size. One fully functional robot that the project did achieve could be tested in three different scenarios.

The first was a medical or biological application, in which the robot was handling biological cells, injecting liquid into them. The second scenario was micro-assembly, in which the robot soldered tiny parts. The final scenario looked at atomic force, with the robot mounting atomic force and doing experiments on it.
The results were encouraging. The experiments showed that the cell injection is entirely feasible, as is the micro soldering. Robots with this sort of capability, and mobility, would be perfectly suited to lab work, such as the micro assembly of prototypes. Tasks such as cell injection could be performed on a mass scale.
With MICRON now having run its course, the project team is currently working on the project reports and evaluation. “What’s missing is the integration work, and this is what we will try to do next within the Swarm project,” says IPR´s Joerg Seyfried. “This will build on MICRON to produce robots with a ‘swarm’ intelligence – that is, with limited capabilities, but able to communicate with each other.”
The tiny robots of science fiction tales might be smarter, but, as Seyfried points out, “We’re working on the smallest size range currently being worked on by a few other groups worldwide – like MIT. On a European level, MICRON is unique.”

This was seized 4 u at Information Society Technologies

New spaceport in Singapore

My favorite travel agency Space Adventures, Ltd. announced that it plans to develop an integrated spaceport in Singapore that will offer suborbital

spaceflights, as well as operate astronaut training facilities and a public education and interactive visitor center. Spaceport Singapore, in addition to providing suborbital spaceflights, will offer a wide range of space and high-altitude experiences for those who wish to experience various aspects of astronaut training. These include parabolic flights that will allow passengers to experience the thrill of weightlessness, G-force training in a centrifuge, and simulated space walks in a neutral buoyancy tank. Visitors can fly in a variety of jet aircraft, enjoy the exhilarating flight simulators and interactive exhibit experiences, or simply learn about the history and technology of space travel. The consortium supporting Spaceport Singapore is a combination of commercial, research, entertainment and tourist interests. Along with Space Adventures, is Octtane Pte, Batey Pte Ltd., Lyon Capital Inc., DP Architects, ST Medical and KPMG Corporate Finance who are all involved with this project. For more information on Spaceport Singapore, please visit spaceportsingapore.com.
This was seized 4 u at Space Adventures

Abe Vigoda got 85

Yes, Abe Vigoda is still alive (as of this posting). In fact, he's celebrating his 85th birthday today - more than 20 years after people magazine mistakenly reported his death. Well, there's no need to endlessly question his mortality any longer. Just download the "Abe Vigoda status" extension for Firefox to keep tabs on whether or not he's still alive.

This was seized 4 u at Boing Boing

I'm questioning the liability of this extension and hope that Steve does his feature about the creditability & swiftness of this Firefox extention on this page as soon as possible!

Family Takes Picture on June 17th of Every Year Since 1976

Meet Diego and Susy. On June 17th, 1976 Diego and Susy sat for a photograph. And every subsequent year, on June 17th, they and their growing family sat for another photograph. They do this to "...stop a fleeting moment, the arrow of time passing by." They have posted their photographs on the web to share with us their fleeting moments.
Read more...

This was seized 4 u at ZoneZero

uBrowser Introduces New 3D Browser

This just in.. from the developer's web site...

"uBrowser is a simple Web Browser that illustrates one way of embedding the Mozilla® Gecko rendering engine into a standalone application using LibXUL. In this case, the contents of the page is grabbed as it's being rendered and displayed as a texture on some geometry using OpenGL™. You are able to interact with the page (mostly) normally and visit (almost) any site that works correctly with Firefox® 1.5.

Its purpose is to provide a test bed and a proof of concept for the software I'm working on at Linden Lab. By releasing the source code I'm hoping that others can benefit from what I've learnt as well as help fix bugs and identify areas for improvement. It is not meant as a replacement for your regular 2D browser."
Read more...

This was seized 4 u at uBrowser

A computer that could be integrated with the human body

A molecular computer that uses enzymes to perform calculations has been built by researchers in Israel. Itamar Willner, who constructed the molecular calculator with colleagues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, believes enzyme-powered computers could eventually be implanted into the human body and used to, for example, tailor the release of drugs to a specific person's metabolism.
The team built their computer using two enzymes - glucose dehydrogenase (GDH) and horseradish peroxidase (HRP) - to trigger two interconnected chemical reactions. Two chemical components - hydrogen peroxide and glucose - were used to represent input values (A and B). The presence of each chemical corresponded to a binary 1, while the absence represented a binary 0. The chemical result of the enzyme-powered reaction was determined optically.
The enzyme computer was used to perform two fundamental logic computations known as AND (where A and B must both equal one) and XOR (where A and B must have different values). The addition of two further enzymes - glucose oxidase and catalase - connected the two logical operations, making it possible to add together binary digits using the logic functions.
Enzymes are already widely used to assist calculations using specially encoded DNA. These DNA computers have the potential to surpass the speed and power of existing silicon computers because they can perform many calculations in parallel and pack a vast number of components into a tiny space. But Willner says his enzyme computer is not designed for speed – it can take several minutes to perform a calculation. Rather, he envisages it eventually being incorporated into bio-sensing equipment and used, for example, to monitor and react to a patient's response to particular dosages of a drug. "This is basically a computer that could be integrated with the human body," Willner told New Scientist. "We feel you could implant an enzyme computer into the body and use it to calculate an entire metabolic pathway." Martyn Amos from University of Exeter, UK, also sees great potential for such devices. "The development of fundamental devices such as counters is vital for the future success of bio-molecular computers," he told New Scientist.
"If such counters could be engineered inside living cells, then we can imagine them playing a role in applications such as intelligent drug delivery, where a therapeutic agent is generated at the site of a problem," Amos says. "Counters would also offer a biological 'safety valve', to prevent engineered cells proliferating in an uncontrolled fashion."

This was seized 4 u at New Scientist

Microbes convert 'Styrofoam' into biodegradable plastic

Bacteria could help transform a key component of disposable cups, plates and utensils into a useful eco-friendly plastic, significantly reducing the environmental impact of this ubiquitous, but difficult-to-recycle waste stream, according to a study scheduled to appear in the April 1 issue of the American Chemical Society journal, Environmental Science & Technology.

The microbes, a special strain of the soil bacterium Pseudomonas putida, converted polystyrene foam — commonly known as Styrofoam™ — into a biodegradable plastic, according to Kevin O’Connor, Ph.D., of University College Dublin, the study’s corresponding author. The study is among the first to investigate the possibility of converting a petroleum-based plastic waste into a reusable biodegradable form.
Read more...

This was seized with many thanks! 4 u at Science Blog

'Borg' Computer Collective Designs NASA Space Antenna

Like a friendly, non-biological form of the Borg Collective of science fiction fame, 80 personal computers, using artificial intelligence (AI), have combined their silicon brains to quickly design a tiny, advanced space antenna. If all goes well, three of these computer-designed space antennas will begin their trip into space in March 2006, when an L-1011 aircraft will take off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The airplane will drop a Pegasus XL rocket into the sky high above the Pacific Ocean. The rocket will ignite and carry three small Space Technology (ST5) satellites into orbit. Each satellite will be equipped with a strange-looking, computer-designed space antenna. Although they resemble bent paperclips, the antennas are highly efficient, according to scientists. "This is the first time an artificially evolved object will have flown in space," observed Jason Lohn, who led the project to design the antennas at NASA Ames Research Center, located in California's Silicon Valley. The three 'microsats,' each no bigger than a typical TV, weigh only about 25 kilograms (55 pounds) each. Slightly bigger than a quarter, each antenna, able to fit into a one-inch space (2.5 by 2.5 centimeters), can receive commands and send data to Earth from the satellites. Together, the spacecraft will help scientists study magnetic fields in Earth's magnetosphere.
Read more...

This was seized 4 u at NASA

Man-made Star Shines in the Southern Sky

Scientists celebrate another major milestone at Cerro Paranal in Chile, home of ESO's Very Large Telescope array. Thanks to their dedicated efforts, they were able to create the first artificial star in the Southern Hemisphere, allowing astronomers to study the Universe in the finest detail. This artificial laser guide star makes it possible to apply adaptive optics systems, that counteract the blurring effect of the atmosphere, almost anywhere in the sky.
On 28 January 2006, at 23:07 local time, a laser beam of several watts was launched from Yepun, the fourth 8.2m Unit Telescope of the Very Large Telescope, producing an artificial star, 90 km up in the atmosphere. Despite this star being about 20 times fainter than the faintest star that can be seen with the unaided eye, it is bright enough for the adaptive optics to measure and correct the atmosphere's blurring effect. The event was greeted with much enthusiasm and happiness by the people in the control room of one of the most advanced astronomical facilities in the world.
It was the culmination of five years of collaborative work by a team of scientists and engineers from ESO and the Max Planck Institutes for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching and for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.

After more than one month of integration on site with the invaluable support of the Paranal Observatory staff, the VLT Laser Guide Star Facility saw First Light and propagated into the sky a 50cm wide, vivid, beautifully yellow beam. "This event tonight marks the beginning of the Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics era for ESO's present and future telescopes", said Domenico Bonaccini Calia, Head of the Laser Guide Star group at ESO and LGSF Project Manager.
Normally, the achievable image sharpness of a ground-based telescope is limited by the effect of atmospheric turbulence. This drawback can be surmounted with adaptive optics, allowing the telescope to produce images that are as sharp as if taken from space. This means that finer details in astronomical objects can be studied, and also that fainter objects can be observed.
In order to work, adaptive optics needs a nearby reference star that has to be relatively bright, thereby limiting the area of the sky that can be surveyed. To overcome this limitation, astronomers use a powerful laser that creates an artificial star, where and when they need it.
The laser beam, shining at a well-defined wavelength, makes the layer of sodium atoms that is present in Earth's atmosphere at an altitude of 90 kilometres glow. The laser is hosted in a dedicated laboratory under the platform of Yepun. A custom-made fibre carries the high power laser to the launch telescope situated on top of the large Unit Telescope.
High resolution images and their captions are available on this page.

This was seized 4 u at the European Southern Observatory

Quantum computer works best switched off

Even for the crazy world of quantum mechanics, this one is twisted. A quantum computer program has produced an answer without actually running. The idea behind the feat, first proposed in 1998, is to put a quantum computer into a “superposition”, a state in which it is both running and not running. It is as if you asked Schrödinger's cat to hit "Run".
With the right set-up, the theory suggested, the computer would sometimes get an answer out of the computer even though the program did not run. And now researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have improved on the original design and built a non-running quantum computer that really works.
They send a photon into a system of mirrors and other optical devices, which included a set of components that run a simple database search by changing the properties of the photon.
The new design includes a quantum trick called the Zeno effect. Repeated measurements stop the photon from entering the actual program, but allow its quantum nature to flirt with the program's components - so it can become gradually altered even though it never actually passes through.
"It is very bizarre that you know your computer has not run but you also know what the answer is," says team member Onur Hosten.
This scheme could have an advantage over straightforward quantum computing. "A non-running computer produces fewer errors," says Hosten. That sentiment should have technophobes nodding enthusiastically.

This was seized 4 u at New Scientist

Explorers Discover Huge Cave and New Poison Frogs

A cave so huge helicopters can fly into it has just been discovered deep in the hills of a South American jungle paradise. Actually, "Cueva del Fantasma"—Spanish for "Cave of the Ghost"—is so vast that two helicopters can comfortably fly into it and land next to a towering waterfall. It was found in the slopes of Aprada tepui in southern Venezuela, one of the most inaccessible and unexplored regions of the world. The area, known as the Venezuelan Guayana, is one of the most biologically rich, geologically ancient and unspoiled parts of the world. This is the first geographic report and photographic evidence of such an immense cave. However, researchers say, it isn’t really a cave, but a huge, collapsed, steep gorge. As a bonus, researchers also discovered a new dendrobatid frog species, Colostethus breweri, named for the frog’s identifier, Charles Brewer-Carías. Dendrobatid frogs make up the group of amphibians commonly known as "poison dart" frogs.

The origin of the galactic background emission

Using the most sensitive X-ray map of the Galaxy, obtained combining 10 years of data of Rossi XTE orbital observatory, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics have discovered the origin of the galactic background emission. They show that it consists of emission from a million accreting white dwarf binaries and hundreds of millions of normal stars with active coronas.
Nearly 400 years after Galileo determined that the wispy Milky Way actually comprises a multitude of individual stars, scientists using NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer have done the same for the X-ray Milky Way.

The origin of the so-called galactic X-ray background has been a long-standing mystery. Scientists now say that this blanket of X-ray light is not diffuse, as many have thought, but emanates from untold hundreds of millions of individual sources dominated by a type of dead star called a white dwarf.
If confirmed, this new finding would have a profound impact on our understanding of the history of our galaxy, from star-formation and supernova rates to stellar evolution. The results solve major theoretical problems, yet point to a surprising undercounting of stellar objects. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) in Garching, Germany, and the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow discuss these results in two papers published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
"From an airplane you can see a diffuse glow from a city at night," said Dr. Mikhail Revnivtsev of MPA, lead author on one of the papers. "To say a city produces light is not enough. Only when you get closer do you see individual sources that make up that glow - the house lights, street lamps and automobile headlights. In this respect, we have identified the individual sources of local X-ray light. What we found will surprise many scientists."
X-rays are a high-energy form of light, invisible to our eyes and far more energetic than optical and ultraviolet light. Our eyes see individual stars sprinkled in a largely dark sky. In X-ray bandwidths the sky is never dark; there is a pervasive and constant glow.
The science team concluded that the Milky Way galaxy is indeed teeming with X-ray stars, most of them not very bright, and that scientists over the years had underestimated their numbers by perhaps a hundredfold. Surprisingly, the usual suspects of X-ray emission - black holes and neutron stars - are not implicated here. At higher X-ray energies, the X-ray glow arises almost entirely from sources called cataclysmic variables. A cataclysmic variable is a binary star system containing a relatively normal star and a white dwarf, which is a stellar ember of a star like our sun that has run out of fuel. On its own, a white dwarf is dim. In a binary, it can pull away matter from its companion star to heat itself in a process called accretion.

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Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Mobile speech applications a la IBM

Does China prepare to launch an alternate internet?

Yahoo! Collaborated With Chinese Govt. in Li Zhi Case

Monday, February 27, 2006

Multi-touch sensing devices - interactions on a graphical interaction surface.

Wireless system for public safety, emergency and disaster applications.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Musings on Battelle's Book

Molly Beanland - 2006 will be a year of rejoice for new popmusic.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Mini robots to undertake major tasks?

New spaceport in Singapore

Friday, February 24, 2006

Abe Vigoda got 85

A computer that could be integrated with the human body

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Man-made Star Shines in the Southern Sky

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

The origin of the galactic background emission

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