Monday, June 01, 2009
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
October News, Technology
"Before the internet, the village idiot would stay in his own village."
Khaki Bandit - http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/10/29/laptop-thief-steals-130-laptops/ - "'The khaki bandit' posed as an office worker at several corporations and successfully stole over 130 laptops which he later sold on eBay. The ease of theft from the corporate offices (including FedEx and Burger King) shows just how bad corporate security can be. In some cases, the career thief just walked into the office behind an employee with a security badge. Two million laptops were stolen just in 2004, and of those 97 percent were never recovered. Ultimately it was the corporate headquarters of Outback Steakhouse who caught the thief with a bugged laptop that notified them when he re-connected it to the internet."
Would-be identity thief finds himself stumped without printer drivers - http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071023-would-be-identity-thief-finds-himself-stumped-without-printer-drivers.html - Don't steal a drivers' license printer from the DMV, only to call up the manufacturer the next day looking for drivers. That's one tip that 33-year-old Missouri resident Timothy Scott Short apparently wasn't aware of when he stole some equipment from the Missouri Department of Revenue earlier this month, only to find himself facing jail time after outing himself to tech support.
Staged Hack Causes Generator to Self-Destruct - http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/26/power.at.risk/index.html - "It has been revealed that in a U.S. Department of Homeland Security exercise codenamed 'Aurora' conducted in March of this year, researchers were able to cause a power generator to self-destruct remotely via a hack which changed the operating cycle of the generator."
A stellar black hole much more massive than theory predicts is possible has astronomers puzzled. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/071017-monster-bhole.html - Stellar black holes form when stars with masses around 20 times that of the sun collapse under the weight of their own gravity at the ends of their lives. Most stellar black holes weigh in at around 10 solar masses when the smoke blows away, and computer models of star evolution have difficulty producing black holes more massive than this.
Man Hacks 911 System, Sends SWAT on Bogus Raid - http://www.ocregister.com/news/home-emami-county-1894171-ellis-system - "The Orange County Register reports that a 19 year old from Washington state broke into the Orange County California 911 emergency system. He randomly selected the name and address of a Lake Forest, California couple and electronically transferred false information into the 911 system. The Orange County California Sheriff's Department's Special Weapons and Tactics Team was immediately sent to the home of a couple with two sleeping toddlers. The SWAT team handcuffed the husband and wife before deciding it was a prank. Says the article, 'Other law enforcement agencies have seen similar breaches into their 911 systems as part of a trend picked up by computer hackers in the nation called "SWATting"'"
Robot Cannon Goes Berserk, Kills 9 - http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/weapons/robot-cannon-goes-berserk-kills-9-312443.php - A robot cannon began wildly firing on its own for some reason in South Africa last friday, killing nine soldiers and wounding 14.
Caution: Killing Germs May Be Hazardous to Your Health Our war on microbes has toughened them. Now, new science tells us we should embrace bacteria. http://www.newsweek.com/id/57368
World War III Discussed - http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Bush_and_Putin_suggest_potential_for_World_War_III
This article has some historical closecalls regarding WW III - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_III
I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. - Einstein
Jackpot or Mistake? Man Sues Over $1.6M 'Jackpot'New Mexico Indian Casino Says Slot Machine Malfunctioned; Refuses to Pay - http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3772215&page=1 - Hoffman was playing the nickel slot machines at the Sandia Resort and Casino on an Indian reservation in New Mexico when he appeared to hit the jackpot: the machine said he won nearly $1.6 million. But the ecstasy was short-lived. Hoffman says in a lawsuit filed earlier this year that Sandia refused to pay, claiming that the machine malfunctioned. Instead, he said, they gave him about $385 and a few free meals at the casino.
Michael Righi - I am not interested in living my life smoothly. I am interested in living my life on strong principles and standing up for my rights as a consumer, a U.S. citizen and a human being. Allowing stores to inspect our bags at will might seem like a trivial matter, but it creates an atmosphere of obedience which is a dangerous thing. Allowing police officers to see our papers at will might seem like a trivial matter, but it creates a fear-of-authority atmosphere which can be all too easily abused. - Michael Righi, http://newsite.michaelrighi.com/2007/09/01/arrested-at-circuit-city/
"Tsar Bomba is the Western name for the RDS-220, the largest, most powerful weapon ever detonated. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba - Developed by the Soviet Union, the bomb had a yield of about 50 megatons. Its detonation released energy equivalent to approximately 1% of the power output of the Sun for 39 nanoseconds of its detonation. The device was scaled down from its original design of 100 megatons to reduce the resulting nuclear fallout. The Tsar Bomba qualifies as the single most powerful device ever utilized throughout the history of humanity."
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
September News, Technology
Technology in the News (from Slashdot, mysa.com), September -
Cybercrime Now Worth $105 Billion, Bypasses Drug Trade - "Citing recent highly publicized corporate data breaches that have beset major companies like Ameritrade, Citigroup, and Bank of America, McAfee CEO David DeWalt, said that cyber-crime has become a US$105 billion business that now surpasses the value of the illegal drug trade worldwide. Despite the increase in government compliance requirements and the proliferation of security tools, companies continue to underestimate the threat from phishing, data loss, and other cyber vulnerabilities, DeWalt said. 'Worldwide data losses now represent US$40 billion in losses to affected companies and individuals each year, DeWalt says. But law enforcement's ability to find, prosecute, and punish criminals in cyberspace has not kept up: "If you rob a 7-11 you'll get a much harsher punishment than if you stole millions online," DeWal remarked. "The cross-border sophistication in tracking and arresting cyber-criminals is just not there."'"
Woman arrested on forgery charges - A Bexar County woman is behind bars this morning for her part in a possible check forgery ring. And, court documents show she did not act alone. Jessica Romero, 22, was charged with two counts of forgery, as well as numerous unrelated offenses in another county. The arrest warrant says detectives used surveillance video to track Romero after she passed two altered checks in June 2006 at two H-E-B grocery stores. The document says the stores are located in the 9200 block of Grissom Road and 11600 block of Bandera Road. According to the warrant, Romero said she passed as many as 40 bad checks using the account of a man who may be involved in the alleged operation.
Metaplace - To go along with the TechCrunch40 Conference, the company has finally taken the wraps off of their project: Metaplace. Essentially, Metaplace is going to be a virtual world toolkit. The whole thing is built on open standards, and attempt to 'bring virtual worlds to the web', instead of keeping them boxed away in a separate little garden.
Ultra-powerful Laser - Antimatter molecule could lead to ultra-powerful laser - An exotic molecule built from electrons and antimatter is being touted as a route to powerful gamma-ray lasers. An electron can hook up with its antiparticle, the positron, to form a hydrogen-like atom called positronium (Ps). It survives for less than 150 nanoseconds before it is annihilated in a puff of gamma radiation. It was known that two positronium atoms should be able to bind together to form a molecule, called Ps2, and now David Cassidy and Allen Mills from the University of California, Riverside, have made that happen. First, they trapped positrons in a thin film of porous silica. Those positrons captured electrons to form positronium atoms, and the pattern of decay rates signalled that some of these atoms had teamed up to form Ps2 (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature06094).
Trent Reznor Says "Steal My Music" - "A few months ago, Trent Reznor (frontman of the band Nine Inch Nails), was in Australia doing an interview when he commented on the outrageous prices of CDs there. Apparently now his label, Universal Media Group is angry at him for having said that. During a concert last night, he told fans, '...Has anyone seen the price come down? Okay, well, you know what that means — STEAL IT. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin'.
The Most Polluted Places in the World - "Blacksmith Institute has published their list of the most polluted sites in the world compiled by comparing the toxicity of the contamination, the likelihood of it getting into humans and the number of people affected. For example, ninety-nine percent of the children living in and around the poly-metallic smelter at La Oroya in Peru, owned by the Missouri-based Doe Run Corporation, have blood lead levels that exceed acceptable limits. Scientific American says that despite the massive pollution, it would be relatively cheap and easy to clean up the most dangerous hazards.
Cybercrime Now Worth $105 Billion, Bypasses Drug Trade - "Citing recent highly publicized corporate data breaches that have beset major companies like Ameritrade, Citigroup, and Bank of America, McAfee CEO David DeWalt, said that cyber-crime has become a US$105 billion business that now surpasses the value of the illegal drug trade worldwide. Despite the increase in government compliance requirements and the proliferation of security tools, companies continue to underestimate the threat from phishing, data loss, and other cyber vulnerabilities, DeWalt said. 'Worldwide data losses now represent US$40 billion in losses to affected companies and individuals each year, DeWalt says. But law enforcement's ability to find, prosecute, and punish criminals in cyberspace has not kept up: "If you rob a 7-11 you'll get a much harsher punishment than if you stole millions online," DeWal remarked. "The cross-border sophistication in tracking and arresting cyber-criminals is just not there."'"
Woman arrested on forgery charges - A Bexar County woman is behind bars this morning for her part in a possible check forgery ring. And, court documents show she did not act alone. Jessica Romero, 22, was charged with two counts of forgery, as well as numerous unrelated offenses in another county. The arrest warrant says detectives used surveillance video to track Romero after she passed two altered checks in June 2006 at two H-E-B grocery stores. The document says the stores are located in the 9200 block of Grissom Road and 11600 block of Bandera Road. According to the warrant, Romero said she passed as many as 40 bad checks using the account of a man who may be involved in the alleged operation.
Metaplace - To go along with the TechCrunch40 Conference, the company has finally taken the wraps off of their project: Metaplace. Essentially, Metaplace is going to be a virtual world toolkit. The whole thing is built on open standards, and attempt to 'bring virtual worlds to the web', instead of keeping them boxed away in a separate little garden.
Ultra-powerful Laser - Antimatter molecule could lead to ultra-powerful laser - An exotic molecule built from electrons and antimatter is being touted as a route to powerful gamma-ray lasers. An electron can hook up with its antiparticle, the positron, to form a hydrogen-like atom called positronium (Ps). It survives for less than 150 nanoseconds before it is annihilated in a puff of gamma radiation. It was known that two positronium atoms should be able to bind together to form a molecule, called Ps2, and now David Cassidy and Allen Mills from the University of California, Riverside, have made that happen. First, they trapped positrons in a thin film of porous silica. Those positrons captured electrons to form positronium atoms, and the pattern of decay rates signalled that some of these atoms had teamed up to form Ps2 (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature06094).
Trent Reznor Says "Steal My Music" - "A few months ago, Trent Reznor (frontman of the band Nine Inch Nails), was in Australia doing an interview when he commented on the outrageous prices of CDs there. Apparently now his label, Universal Media Group is angry at him for having said that. During a concert last night, he told fans, '...Has anyone seen the price come down? Okay, well, you know what that means — STEAL IT. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin'.
The Most Polluted Places in the World - "Blacksmith Institute has published their list of the most polluted sites in the world compiled by comparing the toxicity of the contamination, the likelihood of it getting into humans and the number of people affected. For example, ninety-nine percent of the children living in and around the poly-metallic smelter at La Oroya in Peru, owned by the Missouri-based Doe Run Corporation, have blood lead levels that exceed acceptable limits. Scientific American says that despite the massive pollution, it would be relatively cheap and easy to clean up the most dangerous hazards.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Technology in the News, April 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3869753.stm - "Researchers at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich are reporting that solar sunspot activity is at a 1000-year peak. Records of sunspots have been kept since 1610. The period between 1645 and 1715 (known as the Maunder Minimum) was a period of very few sunspots.”
The psychopathology of the modern American corporate leader: http://nymag.com/guides/2007/officelife/30010/ In the real world, bosses are known to suffer from a long list of social pathologies: naked aggression, credit hogging, micromanaging, bullying, you name it. According to one report, 60 to 75 percent of employees—it doesn’t matter the organization—say the worst aspect of their job is their boss. It’s not difficult to believe, as one office expert concludes, that “every employed adult will have to work for a bad boss for some significant period.”
http://support.turbotax.intuit.com/cgi-bin/turbotax.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3598&lid=7030
"Turbo Tax by Intuit completely melted down under the load from last minute filers. Some people have been having problems as long as 24 hours already. I surrendered 2 hours before the East Coast deadline and schlepped on down to the Post Office."
Six-dimensional Space-Time Theory - http://www.physorg.com/news96027669.html
The analytical structure underlying the spinorial theory can be represented visually. The structure is a Xi-transform, which moves between the three spaces in the directions given by the bendings of the upper case Greek letter Xi. The distorted squares represent the wave operator. The product of a wave operator and a Xi transform, taken in any order, is zero.
Fat People Cost Companies More - http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=3069293 Overweight workers cost their bosses more in injury claims than their lean colleagues, suggests a study that found the heaviest employees had twice the rate of workers' compensation claims as their fit co-workers.
Worry Your Way to the Top, How insecurity and paranoia can accelerate your career http://men.msn.com/articlemh.aspx?cp-documentid=3935741>1=9311 You'll tap deep reservoirs of anger and brutality. The darkness doesn't only produce superior radar. It also generates adrenaline and bile. This, in turn, creates that great business tool that makes men famous: rage. I once saw a senior manager, scared of losing a key client, get on the horn with his sales department and burn them a new eardrum. Screaming, face a bright shade of red, spit flying. Point made, he hung up and turned to me. "Well," he said, smiling, "let's see if that lights a fire under their butts." It did.
The psychopathology of the modern American corporate leader: http://nymag.com/guides/2007/officelife/30010/ In the real world, bosses are known to suffer from a long list of social pathologies: naked aggression, credit hogging, micromanaging, bullying, you name it. According to one report, 60 to 75 percent of employees—it doesn’t matter the organization—say the worst aspect of their job is their boss. It’s not difficult to believe, as one office expert concludes, that “every employed adult will have to work for a bad boss for some significant period.”
http://support.turbotax.intuit.com/cgi-bin/turbotax.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3598&lid=7030
"Turbo Tax by Intuit completely melted down under the load from last minute filers. Some people have been having problems as long as 24 hours already. I surrendered 2 hours before the East Coast deadline and schlepped on down to the Post Office."
Six-dimensional Space-Time Theory - http://www.physorg.com/news96027669.html
The analytical structure underlying the spinorial theory can be represented visually. The structure is a Xi-transform, which moves between the three spaces in the directions given by the bendings of the upper case Greek letter Xi. The distorted squares represent the wave operator. The product of a wave operator and a Xi transform, taken in any order, is zero.
Fat People Cost Companies More - http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=3069293 Overweight workers cost their bosses more in injury claims than their lean colleagues, suggests a study that found the heaviest employees had twice the rate of workers' compensation claims as their fit co-workers.
Worry Your Way to the Top, How insecurity and paranoia can accelerate your career http://men.msn.com/articlemh.aspx?cp-documentid=3935741>1=9311 You'll tap deep reservoirs of anger and brutality. The darkness doesn't only produce superior radar. It also generates adrenaline and bile. This, in turn, creates that great business tool that makes men famous: rage. I once saw a senior manager, scared of losing a key client, get on the horn with his sales department and burn them a new eardrum. Screaming, face a bright shade of red, spit flying. Point made, he hung up and turned to me. "Well," he said, smiling, "let's see if that lights a fire under their butts." It did.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Technology in the News - April
Computer Science Paper Generator - http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/ - Type your name into the box that says 'Author' and click generate. It will create a Computer Science paper full of techno-babble. For fun, pass the paper on to an 'expert' to get their opinion of the 'technical paper'.
Frozen Frogs, Back From the Dead - Two-thirds of their body water, or more, freezes," explained Jack Layne, a biologist at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. "The heart stops, the breathing stops. For all practical purposes you'd assume that it was dead." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0301_050301_woodfrog.html “The amphibian's heart and brain cease to function” …….. “A key to their survival is a natural antifreeze that prevents the amphibians' cells from dehydrating excessively during the freezing process.”
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/brain-block.html - Scientists at the MIT Media Lab have invented a way to reversibly silence brain cells using pulses of yellow light, offering the prospect of controlling the haywire neuron activity that occurs in diseases such as epilepsy and Parkinson's disease.
Tutorial on Google Mapping Photo Albums - http://gallery.jobemedia.org/map_about.html
Elevation: Hondo, TX: 895 ft, Dunlay, TX: 928 ft, Castroville, TX: 771 ft, Devine, TX: 647 ft
Teen builds nuclear reactor - http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how20/58c7db3c57f61110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html
Creepy in a Someone-is-Always-Watching-You Way - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/6524495.stm - "Talking" CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England. They are already used in Middlesbrough where people seen misbehaving can be told to stop via a loudspeaker, controlled by control centre staff.
Frozen Frogs, Back From the Dead - Two-thirds of their body water, or more, freezes," explained Jack Layne, a biologist at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. "The heart stops, the breathing stops. For all practical purposes you'd assume that it was dead." http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0301_050301_woodfrog.html “The amphibian's heart and brain cease to function” …….. “A key to their survival is a natural antifreeze that prevents the amphibians' cells from dehydrating excessively during the freezing process.”
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/brain-block.html - Scientists at the MIT Media Lab have invented a way to reversibly silence brain cells using pulses of yellow light, offering the prospect of controlling the haywire neuron activity that occurs in diseases such as epilepsy and Parkinson's disease.
Tutorial on Google Mapping Photo Albums - http://gallery.jobemedia.org/map_about.html
Elevation: Hondo, TX: 895 ft, Dunlay, TX: 928 ft, Castroville, TX: 771 ft, Devine, TX: 647 ft
Teen builds nuclear reactor - http://www.popsci.com/popsci/how20/58c7db3c57f61110vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html
Creepy in a Someone-is-Always-Watching-You Way - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/6524495.stm - "Talking" CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England. They are already used in Middlesbrough where people seen misbehaving can be told to stop via a loudspeaker, controlled by control centre staff.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Technology in the News - March, Part 2
Giant Hexagon Found on Saturn's North Pole - http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-034
Where’s the Undo button? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17702021/ Techie wipes out $38 billion fund, Keystroke mistake deletes data for Alaska’s oil-funded account
Is Hummer better for the environment than Prius? - http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/print_item.asp?NewsID=188 A Prius takes more energy to manufacture than a Hummer — 50% more. In addition, the article claims that the Prius costs $3.25 per mile over its expected lifespan of 100,000 miles compared to $1.95 per mile for the Hummer. The article gets its data from a study by CNW Marketing called Dust to Dust, which is an attempt to account for all the costs of vehicles, from manufacture through operation through repair and disposal.
Researchers in San Joaquin County, California have discovered what appears to be a massive impact crater made by an asteroid nearly 50 million years ago - http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Oil_exploration_in_California%2C_USA_reveals_giant_impact_crater “The impact would have been as strong as 100,000 nuclear bombs all going off at once.”
France makes UFO files public - http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070322/wl_afp/sciencespaceufo_070322143210 - Multiple sightings -- in at least one case involving thousands of people across France -- and evidence such as burn marks and radar showing flight patterns or accelerations that defy the laws of physics are taken very seriously.
On January 8, 1981 outside the town of Trans-en-Provence in southern France, for example, a man working in a field reported hearing a strange whistling sound and seeing a saucer-like object about 2.5 meters (eight feet) in diameter land in his field about 50 meters (yards) away. A dull-zinc grey, the saucer took off, he told police, almost immediately, leaving burn marks. Investigators took photos, and then collected and analyzed samples, and to this day no satisfactory explanation has been made.
The website, which crashed host servers hours after it was unveiled due to heavy traffic, is extremely well organized and complete, even including scanned copies of police reports. To visit the website: www.cnes-geipan.fr
Worst Company of the Year 2007, The RIAA - http://slashdot.org/articles/07/03/22/2342226.shtml
The creation of Sheeple: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=444436&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source - Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs. The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.
Where’s the Undo button? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17702021/ Techie wipes out $38 billion fund, Keystroke mistake deletes data for Alaska’s oil-funded account
Is Hummer better for the environment than Prius? - http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/print_item.asp?NewsID=188 A Prius takes more energy to manufacture than a Hummer — 50% more. In addition, the article claims that the Prius costs $3.25 per mile over its expected lifespan of 100,000 miles compared to $1.95 per mile for the Hummer. The article gets its data from a study by CNW Marketing called Dust to Dust, which is an attempt to account for all the costs of vehicles, from manufacture through operation through repair and disposal.
Researchers in San Joaquin County, California have discovered what appears to be a massive impact crater made by an asteroid nearly 50 million years ago - http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Oil_exploration_in_California%2C_USA_reveals_giant_impact_crater “The impact would have been as strong as 100,000 nuclear bombs all going off at once.”
France makes UFO files public - http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070322/wl_afp/sciencespaceufo_070322143210 - Multiple sightings -- in at least one case involving thousands of people across France -- and evidence such as burn marks and radar showing flight patterns or accelerations that defy the laws of physics are taken very seriously.
On January 8, 1981 outside the town of Trans-en-Provence in southern France, for example, a man working in a field reported hearing a strange whistling sound and seeing a saucer-like object about 2.5 meters (eight feet) in diameter land in his field about 50 meters (yards) away. A dull-zinc grey, the saucer took off, he told police, almost immediately, leaving burn marks. Investigators took photos, and then collected and analyzed samples, and to this day no satisfactory explanation has been made.
The website, which crashed host servers hours after it was unveiled due to heavy traffic, is extremely well organized and complete, even including scanned copies of police reports. To visit the website: www.cnes-geipan.fr
Worst Company of the Year 2007, The RIAA - http://slashdot.org/articles/07/03/22/2342226.shtml
The creation of Sheeple: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=444436&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source - Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs. The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Technology in the News - March
Software bug crashes F-22 Raptor’s computers while flying. http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/02/25/2038217.shtml
Asteroid on Collision Path with Earth 2036 - http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10424822 .
SETI@Home finds something - http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TECHBIT_ALIENS_LAPTOP?SITE=FLDAY&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Secret Life of a Cyber Hero - http://www.crime-research.org/news/2002/08/Mess1901.htm
Meetings Make Us Dumber - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17279961/
Out of IP Addresses in 7.5 years - http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/ipv6.ars
Curing cancer with anti-matter - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6403737.stm - Cancer cells were successfully targeted with anti-matter subatomic particles, causing intense biological damage leading to cell death.
Dark Matter, Dark Energy - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/magazine/11dark.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Smoot’s and Perlmutter’s work is part of a revolution that has forced their colleagues to confront a universe wholly unlike any they have ever known, one that is made of only 4 percent of the kind of matter we have always assumed it to be — the material that makes up you and me and this magazine and all the planets and stars in our galaxy and in all 125 billion galaxies beyond. The rest — 96 percent of the universe — is ... who knows?
“Dark,” cosmologists call it, in what could go down in history as the ultimate semantic surrender. This is not “dark” as in distant or invisible. This is “dark” as in unknown for now, and possibly forever.
If so, such a development would presumably not be without philosophical consequences of the civilization-altering variety. Cosmologists often refer to this possibility as “the ultimate Copernican revolution”: not only are we not at the center of anything; we’re not even made of the same stuff as most of the rest of everything. “We’re just a bit of pollution,” Lawrence M. Krauss, a theorist at Case Western Reserve, said not long ago at a public panel on cosmology in Chicago. “If you got rid of us, and all the stars and all the galaxies and all the planets and all the aliens and everybody, then the universe would be largely the same. We’re completely irrelevant.” …
… But then, in the 1970s, astronomers began noticing something that didn’t seem to fit with the laws of physics. They found that spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way were spinning at such a rate that they should have long ago wobbled out of control, shredding apart, shedding stars in every direction. Yet clearly they had done no such thing. They were living fast but not dying young. This seeming paradox led theorists to wonder if a halo of a hypothetical something else might be cocooning each galaxy, dwarfing each flat spiral disk of stars and gas at just the right mass ratio to keep it gravitationally intact. Borrowing a term from the astronomer Fritz Zwicky, who detected the same problem with the motions of a whole cluster of galaxies back in the 1930s, decades before anyone else took the situation seriously, astronomers called this mystery mass “dark matter.”
Spacecraft may surf the solar system on magnetic fields - http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn11375-spacecraft-may-surf-the-solar-system-on-magnetic-fields-.html
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