While it won't destroy buildings, or directly kill people, it will shut down everything in its path with a power button.
Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) bombs have been written about for quite some time, and are supposed to have been used in a number of conflicts in the past 15 years. These weapons are designed to shut down cities, as well as military communications and weapon systems, not physically destroy them.
Five commissioners head the Federal Communications Commission. Most of its decisions remain arcane and of interest only to specialists, but this year alone, the Commission has taken assertive steps against certain P2P throttling techniques and in favor of white space devices in high-profile cases have a direct impact on your end-user Internet experience. So, when one of the five commissioners gives a speech (PDF) in which DRM is praised as "very effective," ISP filtering is portrayed as... (more)
Italian president and media baron Silvio Berlusconi said today that he would use his country's imminent presidency of the G8 group to push for an international agreement to "regulate the internet".
Speaking to Italian postal workers, Reuters reports Berlusconi said: "The G8 has as its task the regulation of financial markets... I think the next G8 can bring to the table a proposal for a regulation of the internet."
Italy's G8 presidency begins on January 1. The role... (more)
BABIES with a severe form of epilepsy risk having their diagnosis delayed and their treatment compromised because of a company's patent on a key gene.
It is the first evidence that private intellectual property rights over human DNA are adversely affecting medical care.
Deepak Gill, head of neurology at the Children's Hospital at Westmead, said he would test at least 50 per cent more infants for the SCN1A gene - which would diagnose the disabling Dravet syndrome - i... (more)
They accused the Government of failing to invest in the research needed to stem diseases and parasites which are now thought to have destroyed one in three bee colonies over the past year.
The British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA) has calculated that up to two billion bees succumbed to sickness between November 2007 and April 2008, with a similar number expected to be wiped out by the end of this winter.
It wants ministers to increase the £200,000 currently s... (more)
Climate Change: It's been a bad year for global warming alarmists. Record cold periods and snowfalls are occurring around the globe. The hell that the radicals have promised is freezing over.
As the British House of Commons debated a climate-change bill that pledged the United Kingdom to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050, London was hit by its first October snow since 1922.
Apparently Mother Nature wasn't paying attention. The British people, howeve... (more)
Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species.
From the moment I became involved in the creation of new technologies, their ethical dimensions have concerned me, but it was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the dangers facing us in the 21st century. I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil, the deservedly famous in... (more)
UCLA scientists have found that for computer-savvy middle-aged and older adults, searching the Internet triggers key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning. The findings demonstrate that Web search activity may help stimulate and possibly improve brain function.
The study, the first of its kind to assess the impact of Internet searching on brain performance, is currently in press at the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and will appear in an... (more)
The internet is so full of absolute trash finding anything of value does indeed take some very special talents.
The high energy filament bulbs are being phased out in order to improve energy efficiency and meet climate change targets.
The switchover, which will affect all of the European Union's 500 million citizens, was first ordered at a Brussels summit last year as part of an ambitious energy policy to fight climate change.
A meeting of EU energy ministers, including the UK's new secretary of state for energy and climate change Ed Miliband decided to go ahead with the ban.... (more)
They are being foisted on us as a way of saving energy. But it seems some eco-friendly light bulbs may not be as good for us as we thought.
According to Government scientists, many of the bulbs emit more than the guideline rate of harmful ultraviolet radiation.
The researchers say some energy-saving fluorescent bulbs, which will be compulsory in British homes by 2011, can cause reddening of the skin if used for long periods of time close to the body.
Scientists can finally explain why the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, despite the temperature of the fires being well below the 1,500C melting point of the steel girders holding up the buildings.
The discovery that unusual magnetic forces within the girders made them weak at temperatures of about 500C explains away the conspiracy theories that have spread like wildfire since the disaster.
Sergei Dudarev, of the UK Atomic Energy Agency, found ... (more)
Professor Kunihiko Takeda, Ph.D., is vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University and one of the world's leading authorities on both uranium enrichment and recycling. The 65-year-old is also a bestselling author of books with titles such as “We Should Not Recycle!” “Recycled Illusions” and “Why Are Lies Accepted on Environmental Issues?” Professor Takeda should know why: Although a member of just about every prestigio... (more)
After decades of investigation, scientists are still unable to explain why no part of the brain seems responsible for storing memories.
Most people assume that our memories must exist somewhere inside our heads. But try as they might, medical investigators have been unable to determine which cerebral region actually stores what we remember. Could it be that our memories actually dwell in a space outside our physical structure?
Starting October 1 customers of Comcast's residential data services will have an invisible barrier on their monthly data usage. Under the new guidelines of Comcast's Acceptable Use Policy announced Thursday, that cap will be set at 250 gigabytes per month, per account.
Users who go over the limit will get a courtesy call from Comcast'... (more)
Washington, August 26: Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, US, have shown by experiments that monkeys have the feeling of empathy, and they enjoy sharing things with others.
Empathy in seeing the pleasure of another's fortune is thought to be the impetus for sharing, a trait this study shows transcends primate species.
For the experiment, Frans de Waal, director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes Research Center, and K... (more)
There’s already money going into developing geoengineering plans to combat rising temps on this planet. Shell Oil has stepped forward as an early supporter. There are a myriad suggestions on how to use mega-engineering projects to combat global warming. Sulphurous gases sprayed into the upper atmosphere. Blocks some solar radiation. Billions of aluminized, hydrogen-filled balloons in the stratosphere. Huge reflector mir... (more)
The purpose of this report is to examine the science behind climate change so as to better understand the issue at hand, and thus, to be able to make an informed decision on how to handle the issue. The primary aim here is to examine climate change from a perspective not often heard in media or government channels; that of climate change being a natural phenomenon, not the result of man-made carbon emissions.
FCC holds nation's second largest broadband provider broke network neutrality principles when it throttled P2P traffic from BitTorrent. FCC rejects Comcast contention that network throttling is part of routine network management by broadband service providers.
In the first major test of the FCC's (Federal Communications Commission) network neutrality principles, the agency found Comcast guilty Aug. 1 of secretly degrading network traffic. On a 3-2 vote, the FCC ordered Comcast to ... (more)
A discovery leads to questions about whether the odds of people sharing genetic profiles are sometimes higher than portrayed. Calling the finding meaningless, the FBI has sought to block such inquiry.
The FBI estimated the odds of unrelated people sharing those genetic markers to be as remote as 1 in 113 billion. But the mug shots of the two felons suggested that they were not related: One was black, the other white.
In the years after her 2001 discovery, Troyer fou... (more)
In the last 15 years or so, as a society we have had access to more information than ever before in modern history because of the Internet. There are approximately 1 billion Internet users in the world B and any one of these users can theoretically communicate in real time with any other on the planet. The Internet has been the greatest technological achievement of the 20th century by far, and has been recognized as such by the global community.
DURBAN, Jul 21 (IPS) - Baphethile Mntambo has been farming organically for the past five years because she knows that avoiding chemicals will in the long-term benefit her yield. She decided not to plant genetically modified seeds because she has heard that they cannot be saved for the next season and will eventually deplete her soil. But she is not entirely sure how and why.
"I have heard about GMO, but I don't understand what it is exactly," she says. "The only thing I know is t... (more)
British troops are to be trained to fly drones to spy on insurgents using X-Box and Playstation games consoles.
It is hoped it will help to reduce the number of crashes of the unmanned spy planes, which cost £5million each.
Defence experts believe that the drone industry will be "revolutionised" and £250 million will be saved by the British and American military with the introduction of the advanced game technology usually used by teenagers playing Doom ... (more)
BEIJING, July 15 (Xinhua) -- If bad weather threatens the August 8 opening of Beijing's Olympic Games, then meteorologists may change the weather, according to a Chinese meteorology official.
Chen Zhenlin, a vice director with the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), made the statement Tuesday afternoon at a press conference held at the Beijing International Media Center.
Meteorological departments will consult with the Beijing municipal government whe... (more)
Speaking at the Moscow Institute of Foreign Relations on September 1st, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: “An arms race is entering its new stage. There is a threat of new weaponry looming on the horizon.” What exactly did he mean by saying that?
From hypothesis to reality
The pace of continuous progress made by science and technology keeps growing faster. Scientis... (more)
