"NASA today said it took eight high-resolution photos of Mars that were chosen through a public suggestion box the space agency put up in January. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is nicknamed 'the people's camera,' NASA stated. Through the suggestion box known as HiWish, NASA has received nearly 1,000 suggestions. The first eight images of areas the public selected are available online."
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/03/31/2052217/NASA-Mars-Satellite-Snaps-1st-Public-Picked-Photos
"One of the barriers to the development of nanoscale electronics has potentially been eliminated, as scientists have discovered the world's smallest superconductor. Made up of four pairs of molecules, and measuring just 0.87nm, the superconductor could potentially be used as a nanoscale interconnect in electronic devices, but without the heat and power dissipation problems associated with standard metal conductors."
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/03/31/2237238/Worlds-Smallest-Superconductor-Discovered
"Charles Q. Choi of LiveScience reports that a farmer in southern Henan Province in China has dug up the first known ant-eating dinosaur, a half-meter-long theropod (the dinosaur family to which T. Rex belongs), whose fossilized remains were described as 'fairly intact'. The 83- to 89-million-year-old pygmy dinosaur has been named named Xixianykus zhangi by Xig Xu, De-you Wang, Corwin Sullivan, David Hone, Feng-lu Han, Rong-hao Yan, and Fu-ming Du, whose paper on the critter, A basal parvicursorine (Theropoda: Alvarezsauridae) from the Upper Cretaceous of China, was published in the March 29 issue of Zootaxa (the abstract is available in PDF format for free, the full article is paywall-protected.)"
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/03/31/2243236/Fossil-of-Ant-Eating-Dinosaur-Discovered-In-China
VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico – Dozens of gunmen mounted rare and apparently coordinated attacks targeting two army garrisons in northern Mexico, touching off firefights that killed 18 attackers.
The attempts to blockade soldiers inside their bases — part of seven near-simultaneous attacks across two northern states — appeared to mark a serious escalation in Mexico's drug war, in which cartel gunmen attacked in unit-size forces armed with bulletproof vehicles, dozens of hand grenades and assault rifles.http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100401/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_drug_war_mexico;_ylt=Ai3n7CBWYwj6RKYkRdQ7RQys0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFiYWJrZ2U3BHBvcwM1MgRzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3dvcmxkBHNsawMxOGd1bm1lbmtpbGw-
TOKYO – Confidence at Japanese companies rose for a fourth straight quarter amid growing faith in the global economic recovery, a key central bank report showed Thursday.
In the Bank of Japan's quarterly "tankan" survey of business sentiment, the main index for large manufacturers stood at minus 14, an 11-point improvement from three months ago.http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100401/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_economy;_ylt=AobaIVgXozxDX1jbRqIYAVus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNrdGV2NGxlBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNDAxL2FzX2phcGFuX2Vjb25vbXkEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwM2BHBvcwMzBHB0A2hvbWVfY29rZQRzZWMDeW5faGVhZGxpbmVfbGlzdARzbGsDamFwYW5idXNpbmVz
"How did you like it?" Bob Lutz asks me. It, in this case, is Chevrolet's Volt, the electric –drive vehicle that the company is introducing this year. And this is a loaded question, since Lutz is GM's soon-to-retire vice chairman, a Detroit design deity who put style back into GM's line, and the ultimate car nut. Volt is the product GM's on-again, off-again affair with electrics, but the company will put Volt into production later this year and, needless to say, GM has a lot riding on every new vehicle it introduces. So do you, since as a taxpayer you are a part owner of GM. Chevy hasn't announced pricing on the Volt, but Nissan just said that its new all-electric Leaf will be priced at $32,780, before the $7,500 federal tax credit. Chevy brought Volt to town for the New York International Auto Show, so I got my first test drive today.
Read more: http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2010/03/30/a-testy-test-drive-in-chevys-new-volt/?xid=rss-topstories#ixzz0jpMYaOzn
Editor's Note: Which 17 countries have faster Internet connections than the United States? See our Internet speed map.
(CNN) -- People in the United States basically invented the Internet. So U.S. connections must be the fastest and cheapest in the world, right?
Not so much.
Broadband Internet speeds in the United States are only about one-fourth as fast as those in South Korea, the world leader, according to the Internet monitoring firm Akamai.http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/31/broadband.south.korea/?hpt=C2
VANCOUVER, Wash. — After nearly five decades, guys like James Noce finally get to tell their stories about Area 51.
Yes, that Area 51.
The one that gets brought up when people talk about secret Air Force projects, crashed UFOs, alien bodies and, of course, conspiracies.http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011461015_area51vets28m.html
Men at an above-normal risk of prostate cancer may be able to reduce their risk of developing the disease by taking a drug already on the market.
In research reported Wednesday, the drug dutasteride, currently used to shrink enlarged prostates, was found to reduce the risk of prostate cancer by about a quarter in high-risk men. The medication, sold under the brand name Avodart, apparently caused small tumors to stop growing or even to shrink, researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-prostate1-2010apr01,0,2741240.story
Governors of three states have signed "Freedom Acts" prohibiting implementation of federal health care reform legislation as resistance to the Health Care Reform Act surfaces in state governments.
Utah Gov. Gary Herbert signed H.B. 67 into law last week, which "prohibits an individual in this state from being required to purchase health insurance," and authorizes the state legislature to approve or deny federal reform legislation.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/32483/
WASHINGTON — In proposing a major expansion of offshore oil and gas development, President Barack Obama set out to fashion a carefully balanced plan that would attract bipartisan support for climate and energy legislation while increasing production of domestic oil.
It is not clear that the plan announced Wednesday will do either.http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_14797642
Wasn't this supposed to be the year of the girls on "American Idol"?
In Clash of the Titans, the immortals on Mount Olympus threaten to dispatch a gargantuan creature known as a Kraken when mortal soldiers declare war on them. Humans quake in their sandals at the thought of encountering such a beast.
Researchers at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, did something gutsy but smart Tuesday: they revved the Large Hadron Collider up to a new energy level in full public view.
Happily for the dozens of scientists and engineers in attendance, the LHC successfully reached its goal of a 7 TeV energy level--two beams of protons each at 3.5 trillion electron-volt energies whizzed in opposite directions and eventually collided at several points in the gigantic underground ring-shaped particle accelerator.http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20001468-264.html
The early reviews for the iPad are in, and they're certainly going to make Steve Jobs happy.
Apple handed out iPads to a few select publications a couple of days early, and the critical consensus is overwhelmingly positive.
The usual reviewers from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, as well as a few surprising newcomers to the Apple early reviews circuit, all praised the iPad for its epically long battery life (over 12 hours), impressive speed and beautiful touchscreen.
Priced between $500 and $830, the iPad is hitting stores Saturday.
Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/roundup-ipad-reviews/#ixzz0jpKz9rirChanges to YouTube's user interface are intended to make the site easier to use and to encourage visitors to watch more videos.
The international community has pledged a total of $9.9bn (£6.5bn) in immediate and long-term aid to earthquake-hit Haiti at a UN donor conference.
The $5.3bn (£3.5bn) of support over the next two years exceeds the $4bn requested by the Haitian government to rebuild infrastructure.
"This is the down-payment Haiti needs for wholesale national renewal," UN chief Ban Ki-moon said in New York.
The 12 January quake killed 200,000 and left one million more homeless.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8596080.stm
The Russian republic is shaken by violence two days after suicide bomb attacks in Moscow's subway left 39 dead. Many fear that volatility in the mostly Muslim Caucasus region is spreading.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-dagestan1-2010apr01,0,7399991.story
Now, the tough work for Census takers begins.
About 62 million households, or 52%, have mailed in the 10-question form that counts residents and gathers demographic data.
The European Union's competent authority has approved SriLankan Airlines' Annual Emission Monitoring Plan (AEM) to monitor exhaust emissions of its fleet of aircraft.
SriLankan was one of the first airlines in Asia to obtain approval for its AEM, continuing its pioneering role in conservation among airlines in the region।
http://www.dailymirror.lk/print/index.php/business/127-local/7279.html
Mar 31, 2010 (LBO) - Sri Lankan Airlines said it wants to encourage more young women to become pilots with the national carrier, pointing to recent flights by an all-female flying crew।
Sri Lankan Airlines’ lady pilots have "quietly revolutionized" aviation in Sri Lanka, with several international flights being carried out by all-female crews, the airline said in a statement।
Captain Anusha Siriratne and Junior First Officer Madini Chandradasa were the first all-female crew, operating a flight from Colombo to Trichy and back on November 1, 2009. Each leg on an Airbus A320 aircraft took one hour
http://www.lankabusinessonline.com/fullstory.php?nid=828942002
One of our all-time favorite games is WarioWare, especially the first installment for the Game Boy Advance। The clever idea of remixing Nintendo's old properties into an irreverent hyperspeed assortment of challenges was revolutionary at the time, and had great replay value.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20001524-1.html
SAN BRUNO, Calif.--YouTube is rolling out a new coat of paint on Wednesday.
Its video page redesign, which went up as a beta test to users in late January, will be going out live to everyone by the end of the day. The cleaner look is part of a bigger plan to simplify the site based on user feedback and testing, as well as to keep people from ever leaving.
In a "blogger breakfast" press event at the YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, Calif।, YouTube UI designer Julian Frumar explained that the site was simply not working like it should with the addition of extra features over the years. There were too many things on the screen that were slowing down page views and overwhelming people. In other words, YouTube was getting bloated.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20001503-248.html
NEW YORK--After showing hybrid concepts over the last few auto show seasons, Hyundai finally shows the real deal with a hybrid version of its Sonata midsize sedan at the New York auto show. The standard Sonata got an update at the 2009 Los Angeles Auto Show, radically restyling it with Hyundai's new fluidic sculpture design language. Now fitted with Hyundai's Blue Drive hybrid system, the car gets significantly better mileage।
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31347_7-20001525-270.html
It may be a little late to the game in comparison to the iPod Touch, but starting April 12, you'll finally have the opportunity to get your hands on a 64GB version of the Zune HD. The high-capacity player will initially be available exclusively through ZuneOriginals.com in a choice of platinum, black, blue, red, green, purple, or magenta. The black model will also be available through other outlets in the future. Pricing for the 64GB model is set at $349.99, which is competitive with the iPod Touch
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-12519_7-20001493-49.html
The iPad may not have a built-in camera, multitasking capabilities, or support for Flash, but it does have a 9.7-inch high-resolution touch screen and a faster processor than an iPhone 3GS. Though most games for the iPhone and iPod Touch should run on the iPad, many developers are rapidly creating updated "HD" versions of their existing games to take advantage of the device's improved resolution and slightly altered layout।
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-10446967-233.html
For anyone hoping that a cloud-based music service will launch with the iPad this Saturday, disappointment is lurking.
Music industry sources told CNET this week Apple has informed label managers that a streaming music service is unlikely to be ready before the third quarter.
It will be a disappointment for iTunes fans who have been speculating as to when Apple might use music site Lala--which Apple acquired in December--for its streaming expertise to launch a cloud-based music service।
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-10446967-233.html
Find out what Britney has been nominated for at Canada's most prestigious music awards!
Menthol oil yesterday traded with the negative node and settled -0.77% down at 621.2. In yesterday's trading session menthol oil has touched the low of 620.2 after opening at 626, and finally settled at 621.2. For today's session market is looking to take support at 618.6, a break below could see a test of 616 and where as resistance is now likely to be seen at 625.4, a move above could see prices testing 629.6. Spread betweenmenthol oil APR & MAY contacts yesterday ended at 4.40, we have seen yesterday that the menthol oil market had traded with a negative node and settled -0.77% down. Spread yesterday traded in the range of 0.1 to 4.8.
http://www.topnews.in/commodity-outlook-menthol-oil-kediacommodity-2257764
A new University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) study has concluded that higher fat at breakfast may be healthier than you think.
The adage "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper" can be the best advice to follow to prevent metabolic syndrome, say the researchers.
http://www.topnews.in/best-way-prevent-metabolic-syndrome-eat-king-size-breakfast-2257771
According to an expert, a bar of the sweet treat can slash your risk of heart disease and stroke by 39 per cent.
The Sun has reported that Dr Brian Buijsse believes a 50g treat has the greatest effect.
Buijsse studied nearly 30,000 people aged 35 to 65 in Germany, to reach the conclusion.
http://www.topnews.in/risk-stroke-and-heart-disease-may-be-cut-chocolate-2257773
India's largest automaker, Maruti Suzuki may launch a factory-fitted CNG vehicle by the next fiscal in the Indian market. Officials have confirmed that the R&D team is working on the feasibility of the plan but a lot will still depend on the availability of fuel across the country.
http://www.topnews.in/maruti-suzuki-may-launch-factoryfitted-cng-vehicle-2257774
ASG has managed to sign a multi-million dollar contract with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C). The total worth of this deal is $41 million. The duration of the contract is nine years.
http://www.topnews.in/asg-signs-multimillion-dollar-contract-government-2257776
As the Bharti Group has been able to quench its thirst for an African safari by the $10.7 billion deal to acquire Kuwaiti telco Zain's African operations, Sunil Bharti Mittal has recently named its top lieutenant Manoj Kohli to head the African operations.
http://www.topnews.in/manoj-kohli-head-bharti-s-african-operations-2257777
Celebrating the success that the two-wheeler major has been enjoying over the past couple of years, Hero Honda today announced the Silver Jubilee Special Dividend of 4,000 per cent or Rs 80 per equity share of Rs 2 each, the company said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.
http://www.topnews.in/hero-honda-gifts-its-shareholders-4000-dividend-2257778
A new survey revealed that most of the Australian consumers are still not ready to spend more. Though many of them said that they believe the global crisis has come to an end.
The survey was conducted by the Australian National Retailers Association. The association said that recent interest rate rises were eating the incomes and dampening consumer confidence.
http://www.topnews.in/australian-consumers-are-still-not-spending-more-2257779
National Australia Bank Ltd. said today that it has agreed to approve the pricing components of its takeover target AXA Asia Pacific Holdings Ltd. NAB gave a proposal to buy AXA Asia Pacific Holding's undertakings in New Zealand and Australian for $A4.6 billion.
http://www.topnews.in/nab-says-it-will-acquire-axa-aph-without-its-debt-2257780
Gindalbie Metals Ltd., a Perth based miner, announced today that it has sealed the iron ore deal with its Chinese joint venture partner Angang Group International Trade Corporation (Ansteel). The deal is worth $A70.6 billion and is considered as the largest ever trade deal in the history of Australia.
http://www.topnews.in/gindalbie-seals-a70-billion-iron-ore-deal-ansteel-2257781
This deal is the largest that ST Aerospace has announced since 2006.
Afghan officials said the attack took place in a village near Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province, as farmers were receiving seeds being handed out to persuade Afghans to abandon the poppy crops that produce heroin.
Analysts said the market is likely to see some more selling pressure on Thursday as investors look to book profit ahead of the Good Friday long weekend.
The Straits Times Index dropped 45.93 points to 2,887.46.
"For us it is our first homecoming race in Malaysia. It is a crowd I like. I'd like to have a good race this weekend," Lotus driver Heikki Kovalainen told reporters ahead of Sunday's event at the challenging Sepang circuit.
The toll rose overnight as a fourth victim was reported dead early Wednesday, according to local Fox 5 news, citing police sources.
Nissan said on Tuesday it will begin taking orders on April 20 in the U.S. for the electric Leaf sedan which will be priced starting at $32,780 before subsidies.
President Obama's promise to improve Internet privacy laws faces a major test: will he side with law enforcement or a new coalition including Google, Microsoft, eBay, AT&T, and advocacy groups? It took years for a similar privacy coalition in the 1990s to claim victory.