"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
"While most of us are dangerous when texting, chatting on a phone or being otherwise distracted while driving, one in 40 are actually just fine with such distractions. In a small study, such 'supertaskers' were just as good at driving when carrying on a conversation over a hands-free phone as they were when fully focused. That said, the researchers warned that most people are much worse at driving while chatting and shouldn't do it, adding: 'Given the number of individuals who routinely talk on the phone while driving, one would have hoped that there would be a greater percentage of supertaskers.'"
"Microsoft is going on the offensive against Google, accusing the search giant of creating a browser that does not respect user privacy. The company posted a video, embedded below, on TechNet Edge with the following description: 'Watch a demo on how Google Chrome collects every keystroke you make and how Internet Explorer 8 keeps your information private through two address bars and In Private browsing.' Microsoft's first criticism is Chrome's combining the address bar and the search box into a single entry box; IE8 keeps those fields separate. 'By keeping these boxes separate, your privacy is better protected and the addresses of the sites you're visiting aren't automatically shared with Microsoft, or anyone else,' says IE product manager Pete LePage."
"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
"The GNOME project is proud to release this new version of the GNOME desktop environment and developer platform. Among the hundreds of bug fixes and user-requested improvements, GNOME 2.30 has several highly visible changes: new features for advanced file management, better remote desktop experience, easier notes synchronization and a generally smoother user experience. Learn more about GNOME 2.30 through the detailed release notes and the press release."
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"?
So far, not so much. Didi Benami became the third in a row voted off, finishing in 10th place. Unlike Lacey Brown and Paige Miles, who went before her, she'll get to sing in the "Idol" summer tour, and if she can channel the vocals she brought to her version of "Rhiannon" on Wednesday, we may not have heard the last of her.
There's nothing worse than a boring behemoth.
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.
But when the rampaging fiend finally appears, it's a big yawn — much like the rest of the film. This wannabe epic is overwrought and frenetic but not even sporadically exciting. Its most astounding achievement is the ability to be both chaotic and dull.
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/#ixzz0jpKz9rir
Changes to YouTube's user interface are intended to make the site easier to use and to encourage visitors to watch more videos.
SAN BRUNO, Calif.—By the end of business on March 31, video-sharing site YouTube will have made some obvious—and not-so-obvious—changes to the user interface of its main page.
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
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