FUTURE ZONE

WEB IN INFANCY, SAY BERNERS-LEE

The world wide web is "still in its infancy", the web's inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee tells BBC News.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/technology/7371660.stm

BACK TO THE FUTURE ZONE

150-YEAR-OLD COMPUTER BROUGHT TO LIFE

Designed nearly 150 years ago but never actually built until recently, one of two Babbage Difference Engines will go on display for the first time in North America, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, starting May 10.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=150-year-old-computer-babbage

SLIDESHOW AT LINK ALSO

HOMELAND SECURITY ZONE

NELSON MANDELA IS ON U;S. TERRORIST WATCH LIST

"Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the" United States, reports USA Today. "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls the situation 'embarrassing.'" Former South African leader Mandela was a member "of South Africa's governing African National Congress (ANC), the once-banned anti-Apartheid organization. In the 1970s and '80s, the ANC was officially designated a terrorist group by the country's ruling white minority. Other countries, including the United States, followed suit."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-04-30-watchlist_N.htm

ARSHALS MAKE NO-FLY LIST

  "False identifications based on a terrorist no-fly list have for years prevented some federal air marshals from boarding flights they are assigned to protect," reports the Washington Times. Marshals are sometimes "mistaken for terrorism suspects who share the same names." The Federal Air Marshal Service "is finally taking steps to address the problem."

http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080430/NATION/946059998/1001

NARCO-TERROR SPREADS TO NORTH AMERICA

David Johnson, Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, "says that narco-terrorism is spreading into North America," reports United Press International. He "says that the illicit drug trade is directly linked to known terrorist groups in the Western Hemisphere and that these groups are employing terrorist tactics to traffic drugs into North America."

http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Emerging_Threats/Briefing/2008/04/30/narco-terrorism_spreading_to_north_america/9270/

NATURAL DISASTER ZONE

INEXPENSIVE ROOF VENT COULD PREVENT BILLIONS IN WIND DAMAGE

Hurricanes often lift the roofs off buildings and expose them to havoc and damaging conditions, even after the worst of the wind has passed. A local roofer, Virginia Tech faculty members from architecture and engineering, and a graduate student have devised an inexpensive vent that can reduce roof uplift on buildings during high winds, even a hurricane.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080428141822.htm

CYBERZONE

FUJITSU CLIMBS A HAWAI'I VOLCANO IN PURSUIT OF MORE RELIABLE CHIPS

The top of a dormant volcano in Hawaii might seem like an unlikely place to work on improving the reliability of computer chips, but that's just the spot engineers from Fujitsu chose over their well-equipped laboratory in Tokyo.

http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/3205677/121438482/111378/0/

THE 10 MOST IMPORTANT TECHNOLOGIES YOU NEVER THINK ABOUT

The late sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke famously said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/3203395/121438482/111115/0/

NASA GET SMALL WITH MINI SATELLITE PROGRAM

NASA's Ames Research Center said Thursday it would team with m2mi to develop "nanosats" that weigh between 11 and 110 pounds.

The agency says large groups of nanosatellites can be grouped in a constellation, which will be placed in low-Earth-orbit to offer new "fifth generation" telecommunications and TCP/IP-based networks and related services.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/27224

RACE IS ON TO ADVANCE SOFTWARE FOR PARALLEL COMPUTING

Three rival teams of computer researchers are working on new types of software needed for parallel computing.

Stanford University and six computer and chip makers plan to announce the creation of the Pervasive Parallelism Lab, joining the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in this research.

Intel acknowledged in 2004 that it had hit what was essentially a heat barrier in designing ever-faster microprocessors and aggressively shifted to multicore designs. Now there is a rush to develop tools for mainstream programmers who have spent their entire careers designing software for sequential, not parallel, programming systems.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/technology/30lab.html?_r=2&ref=technology&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

COMPUTERIZED COMBAT GLOVE

RallyPoint, a startup based in Cambridge, MA, has developed a sensor-embedded glove that allows the soldier to easily view and navigate digital maps, activate radio communications, and send commands without having to take his or her hand off their weapon.

It includes four push-button sensors, a mouse function, three accelerometers, and an USB connection.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20680/page1/

SCIENCE ZONE

CIRCUITRY DISCOVERY COULD LEAD TO BETTER MEMORY

For nearly 40 years, scientists have speculated that basic electrical circuits have a natural ability to remember things even when the power is switched off. They just couldn't...

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2008/04/30/financial/f133532D07.DTL

FIRST TRANSISTOR USING NANOTECHNOLOGY 50X MORE ENERGY EFFICIENT

Transistors are an indispensable building block in electric appliances, where they amplify weak electric currents. Now researchers have developed a new type of transistor that is 50 times more energy efficient than today's models. It is also the first to be developed using nanotechnology.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080424212327.htm

NEW NANOTECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS HIT MARKET 3-4 TIMES A WEEK

Nanotechnology consumer products are in your mouth and on your face. New nanotechnology consumer products are coming on the market at the rate of 3-4 per week. The number of consumer products using nanotechnology has grown from 212 to 609 since March 2006.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080424102505.htm

ENERGY ZONE

METHANE TO POWER VEHICLES AND NOT POLLUTE AIR

Methane percolating out of the Altamont Landfill near Livermore could soon fuel the garbage trucks that dump trash at the site. Waste Management, North America's largest garbage hauling company, today will announce...

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/04/30/BUTS10DSNP.DTL

ENVIRONMENT ZONE

RESTORATION OF TROPICAL RAIN FOREST ECOSYSTEM SUCCESSFUL

Half a century after most of Costa Rica's rain forests were cut down, researchers are attempting what many thought was impossible -- restoring a tropical rain forest ecosystem. When the researchers planted worn-out cattle pastures in Costa Rica with a sampling of local trees in the early 1990s, native species of plants began to move in and flourish, raising the hope that destroyed rain forests could one day be replaced. Ten years after the tree plantings, researchers counted the species of plants that took up residence in the shade of the new planted areas. They found remarkably high numbers of species -- more than 100 in each plot. And many of the new arrivals were also to be found in nearby remnants of the original forests.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080428133928.htm

ASIA PACIFIC ZONE

NEW SUPPORT FOR JAPAN's INTERNET HOMELESS

After months of media coverage about penniless young people in Tokyo being forced to live in Internet cafes, the Labor Ministry in cooperation with the Tokyo Government has opened a Shinjuku support center for the youngsters, as well as allocating budget to action the programs that the center now offers. The Ministry reckons that there are around 5,400 Internet cafe refugees, and hopes that they will contact the Tokyo Challenge Net center to receive counseling, medical advice, basic job seeking training, and loans of up to JPY200,000 yen (US$2,000) for living expenses and JPY400,000 (US$4,000) for rent payments. Osaka and Nagoya plan similar support centers.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jgdxDtDrNZp4ScrkV2i24p-XE9cQ

AUSTRALIA HAS MORE MOBILE PHONES THAN PEOPLE

The number of mobile phones in use in Australia has surged to a record high and now exceeds the nation's population. -

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4500439a28.html

WIRELESS ZONE

SITE CITES

SIMPLE BRAIN EXERCISE CAN BOOST YOUR IQ

Experiments by University of Michigan at Ann Arbor neuropsychologists showed improved "fluid intelligence," or Gf, the ability to reason, solve new problems and think in the abstract.

The first part of the "dual n-back" exercise involves small squares on a screen that pop into a new location every three seconds. Volunteers have to press a button when the current location is a duplicate of two views earlier.

For the second part, the volunteers have to simultaneously carry out the same task with letters. Consonants are played through headphones and they have to press a button when they hear one that is the same as that heard two "plays" earlier.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13786-simple-brain-exercise-can-boost-iq.html

DEATH OF THE SITCOM FREES UP 2,000 WIKIPEDIAS WORTH OF COGNITIVE CAPACITY

In Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky proposes the idea of "cognitive surplus" -- that automation gave us an enormous amount of free time to think and cogitate, and that sitcoms and other light entertainment from the past century were a way of absorbing that surplus, something we're just shaking off now.

In a talk, he compared Wikipedia, which represents the accumulation of about 100 million hours of human thought, to television watching, which absorbs about two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/27/death-of-the-sitcom.html