Space: Drought in Texas Uncovers Spherical Debris from Columbia Shuttle Disaster

Found: One of Columbia's 18 Tanks Nacogdoches Police Department via SPACE

The ongoing drought in Texas has turned up new debris from the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster that killed seven NASA astronauts when the shuttle disintegrated upon re-entry over Texas and Louisiana. The spherical tank was found in an exposed part of Lake Nacogdoches about 160 miles northeast of Houston where it came to rest after the disaster eight years ago.

The debris was discovered last week but was only confirmed as NASA hardware yesterday after Nacogdoches police sent pictures of the tank to NASA officials. An engineer on the shuttle program was able to confirm that the 40-inch tank was one of 18 that flew on Columbia to store liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. It will be shipped back to Kennedy Space Center where all the debris that has been collected from the Columbia incident is kept in a climate controlled hangar.

This tank is apparently not alone, though it is one of the more significant pieces of the Columbia aftermath to emerge recently. Pieces of debris from the disaster are still trickling in to NASA, usually discovered by people in Texas and Louisiana who then contact the agency. Only about 40 percent of the spacecraft has been recovered thus far, NASA estimates.

The rest either burned up during the re-entry disaster or is still scattered across East Texas and Louisiana. Columbia disintegrated as it was headed back to KSC after a 16-day mission. The structural failure was attributed to a piece of insulating foam that separated from the main fuel tank during launch, damaging the heat shield on the shuttle itself and causing a critical failure.

Computers: Biggest Hack in History: U.N. and 70 More Organizations and States Attacked Over Five Years

Hacked: Someone's Been Cyber Snooping on the UN Javier Carbajal via Wikimedia

The biggest hack ever discovered has been exposed by McAfee, and the breadth and depth would be impressive it wasn’t so disconcerting: five years, at least 72 different governments, NGOs, and other organizations (including the United Nations and the International Olympic Committee) and reams and reams of secret data. Of course, McAfee believes there is a single “state actor” behind the attacks, but the company has declined to name it. Care to venture a guess?

The hacks are tied together into a single ongoing event by the fact that they were discovered via the log contents of a central “command and control” server being examined by McAfee investigators beginning in 2009. McAfee investigators dubbed the attack “Operation Shady RAT,” with RAT short for “remote access tool,” the common umbrella term for the software hackers and security types use to access networks from afar.

So who was attacked? Reuters' highlight reel:

The long list of victims in the five-year campaign include the governments of the United States, Taiwan, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Canada; the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); the International Olympic Committee (IOC); the World Anti-Doping Agency; and an array of companies, from defense contractors to high-tech enterprises.

And China, right? Surely if someone was going to hack big targets in the U.S. and Europe, the IOC, the UN, and every major economic player in Asia/Indochina, that person surely wouldn’t overlook China, the biggest player of them all, right? No? That’s interesting.

I’m not the only one who thinks so. Cyber experts not affiliated with McAfee say everything points to the Chinese--the keen interest in Taiwan, the hacking of the IOC prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the defense contractors and high-tech companies whose trade secrets could be exploited. All of this information might be interesting to anyone. But it would be especially interesting to China.

China has not issued an official comment on the hack-a-thon. But if they had, we can assume it would be something along the lines of: “Who, me?”

Research: Archaeologists Use a Hacked Kinect To Create 3-D Scans of Dig Sites

Archaeology Dig Grand Canyon NPS via Flickr

Archaeological digs are a painstaking process even after the earth has been excavated — artifacts must be carefully catalogued so researchers know exactly where they were found, which tells information about their past. On an upcoming dig in Jordan, a modified Kinect could serve as a 3-D scanner, making this process simpler — and decidedly more high-tech.

Researchers hope students traveling to an archaeological dig in Jordan will use a hacked Microsoft Kinect as a mobile scanning system, making 3-D models of ancient sites that can then be visited in a virtual-reality environment.

For now, the system relies upon an overhead camera system, so it only works indoors, but computer scientists at the University of California-San Diego want to modify it so it will work in the field. Researchers at UCSD are planning a future trip to archaeological sites in Jordan, where the system could help catalog their finds.

Jürgen Schulze, a research scientist at UCSD’s division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), eventually want to use the Kinect to scan entire buildings and neighborhoods. This ability would have applications far beyond archaeology, Fast Company points out.

The modified ArKinect — archaeology and Kinect — would scan an entire dig site, and the data would be used to reconstruct the site in 3-D. Calit2 has an immersive VR system called StarCAVE, a 360-degree, 16-panel setup, which allows researchers to interact with virtual objects. A realistic 3-D portrayal of ancient cookware, for instance, would be a lot more valuable than a 2-D photograph, because it would show more detail and craftsmanship and even help researchers understand how an artifact was used.

“There may be experts off site that have access to a CAVE system, and they could collaborate remotely with researchers in the field,” Schulze said in a UCSD release.

The technology could potentially help recovery efforts in disaster zones by digitizing a scene that can then be viewed remotely, he said.

Innovation: News Corp's 'The Daily' Has Its Own News-Gathering Aerial Drone, Which Is Drawing FAA Inquiries

MicroDrones' md4-1000 MicroDrones

The U.S. military has drones, lots of them if the daily reports coming in from Afghanistan and Pakistan are any indication. And a handful of law enforcement groups--though less than would like--have a drone or two at their disposal. But on the domestic, non-security front, drones live a in a regulatory gray area. Hobbyists can use them, but commercial entities are not supposed to employ drones for any kind of monetary gain, says the FAA.

Nonetheless News Corp’s The Daily has a news gathering drone aircraft that it’s been flying around, and the FAA is investigating that use to ensure that it complies with all of the nebulous FAA regulations that kind of exist regarding private drone usage.

The Daily has used its drone to capture aerial footage of storm-struck Alabama earlier this year as well as the flooding in South Dakota, Forbes tells us. Their hardware: a MicroDrone md4-1000, a micro aerial vehicle that can be fitted with various imagery or sensor payloads (Google has one like it, purportedly to augment its aerial map data).

The question for the FAA, then, is whether or not new gathering (or aerial cartography, for that matter) is considered a commercial exercise. Seems like it would be, but given that the FAA is reportedly considering loosening its drone aircraft restrictions later this year anyhow, The Daily may just get the green light anyhow, opening up a potentially really cool new high-tech means of reporting the daily news.

That would be great news for The Daily, which happens to belong to the same media family as the News of the World which recently collapsed under shady phone hacking allegations. Of course, all of this information is unrelated, because it’s not like you can use a drone to hack a cell phone. Right?

Innovation: Microwave Sensors Auto-Detect Bikes At Intersections, To Trigger Traffic Signals and Protect Cyclists

California Bike Commuters Bike commuters in San Jose, Calif., in May 2010. RichardMasoner via Flickr

In most cities, bike commuters lucky enough to have their own lanes still cannot trigger traffic signals, forcing them either to wait for a car to pull up, or cross the street to push the crosswalk button. A microwave motion sensor can help by determining when bikes are present.

The Bay Area town of Pleasanton, Calif., is the only municipality in the nation to use this system, which cyclists say is already improving efficiency and safety. The Intersector motion and presence sensor can tell the difference between bikes and cars, and alter traffic signal patterns accordingly.

Many cities have embedded road sensors that can detect bikes as well as cars, but they don’t work if the bike isn’t positioned properly or if the bike is not made of metal. Bike commuters might be tempted to ride through the intersection rather than wait, which is neither legal nor safe.

Video-monitoring systems can also help detect bikes — Pleasanton uses these at all intersections — but they are stymied by wind and fog, according to the Contra Costa Times. Continuous video monitoring can also spark privacy concerns.

The microwave sensors can monitor up to eight detection zones, which the city would specify, and send up to four commands to the traffic signal control box — such as “right turn,” “straight through” and so on. It updates 20 times per second and can track both moving and stationary vehicles, according to the manufacturer, MS Sedco. The systems cost between $4,000 and $5,000 apiece, the Contra Costa Times says.

Pleasanton has the systems at seven intersections so far, with plans to add at least one more. It should come in handy when cars are eventually outnumbered by bikes in that part of the country.

Web: Germany Investigating Facebook Tagging Feature

BERLIN — A German regulator said Wednesday that he had asked Facebook to disable its new photo-tagging software, saying he was concerned that its facial recognition feature amounted to the unauthorized collection of data on individuals.

Johannes Caspar, the data protection supervisor in Hamburg, who has been aggressive in investigating the online practices of companies like Google and Apple, warned that the feature could violate European privacy laws.

The software, called “suggested automatic tagging,” lets Facebook users assign digital name tags to people in their photographs. Photos that are uploaded later are scanned for physical features and can be tagged and stored.

In a letter sent Tuesday, Mr. Caspar said he had asked Facebook to disable the feature in Germany and respond in two weeks to his concerns. Under German law, the regulator could fine Facebook, which is based in Menlo Park, Calif., up to 300,000 euros ($429,000).

Mr. Caspar also confirmed that the European Commission’s data privacy advisory panel would determine whether tagging itself violated a user’s privacy. Mr. Caspar said he was coordinating his investigation with Jacob Kohnstamm, the chairman of the panel and the Dutch data protection authority.

Through a spokesman, Facebook rejected the regulator’s claim, saying the tagging feature, which gives the person in the photograph the final right to accept, reject or remove a tag, conforms with the European privacy law.

“We will consider the points the Hamburg Data Protection Authority have made about the photo tag suggest feature but firmly reject any claim that we are not meeting our obligations under European Union data protection law,” said a Facebook spokesman in Berlin.

The dispute is the latest between leading American technology companies and European privacy regulators, especially in Germany, over the privacy ramifications raised by social networking, online mapping and location services tied to mobile advertising.

Last year, Google apologized to privacy officials around the world, and paid some fines, after it was revealed that Google’s roving Street View mapping vehicles were also collecting private data from unencrypted Wi-Fi routers.

Google attributed the systematic, unauthorized collection of individual data to a programmer’s error.

Apple, the maker of the iPhone, came under scrutiny in April in Germany after a computer expert revealed that the iPhone was compiling logs of user locations. The inquiry, which was led by privacy officials in Bavaria, was closed in June after Apple agreed to redesign the feature to address German privacy concerns, said Thomas Kranig, the head of the Bavarian data protection agency.

Mr. Kranig, in an interview, said Apple had attributed the unauthorized data collection to a programmer’s error and had redesigned iPhone software to give Germans the option to allow collection of location data.

In July 2010, Mr. Caspar started an investigation into Facebook over its Friends Finder feature, which allows Facebook to copy names and details from a user’s e-mail address book to find friends who are also on Facebook. Mr. Caspar said Facebook, besides finding friends, was also identifying non-Facebook users culled from the lists with solicitations to join its network.

That inquiry was closed, Mr. Caspar said, after Facebook agreed to change the Friends Finder application to let anyone contacted through the function decide in advance whether their data could be used by Facebook.

Despite its run-ins with privacy officials, Facebook has grown in Germany, where it has more than 20 million users who log in at least once a month.

Mr. Caspar said Tuesday that Facebook had built an archive of more than 75 billion photos, and 450 million people have been tagged worldwide.

The Facebook representative in Berlin said Facebook did not permanently store data on individual faces, but could not say how long Facebook kept the data.

Tech News: South Korean Scientists Create Glowing Dog

Glowing Dog (illustration)

SEOUL - SOUTH Korean scientists said on Wednesday they have created a glowing dog using a cloning technique that could help find cures for human diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, Yonhap news agency reported.

A research team from Seoul National University (SNU) said the genetically modified female beagle, named Tegon and born in 2009, has been found to glow fluorescent green under ultraviolet light if given a doxycycline antibiotic, the report said.

The researchers, who completed a two-year test, said the ability to glow can be turned on or off by adding a drug to the dog's food.

'The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases,' the news agency quoted lead researcher Lee Byeong Chun as saying.

He said the dog was created using the somatic cell nuclear transfer technology that the university team used to make the world's first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005.

The scientist said that because there are 268 illnesses that humans and dogs have in common, creating dogs that artificially show such symptoms could aid treatment methods for diseases that afflict humans. -- REUTERS

Tech News: People From Northern Parts Of The World Have Bigger Brains

Brains

LONDON - PEOPLE from northern parts of the world have evolved bigger brains and larger eyes to help them to cope with long, dark winters and dim skies, scientists said on Wednesday.

Researchers from Oxford University studied the eye sockets and brain capacity of 55 human skulls from 12 different populations across the world and found that the further human populations live from the equator, the bigger their brains.

It's not because they are smarter, however, but because they need bigger vision areas in the brain to cope with the low light levels at high latitudes, the scientists said in a report of their findings in the journal Biology Letters.

'As you move away from the equator, there's less and less light available, so humans have had to evolve bigger and bigger eyes,' said Eiluned Pearce from Oxford's School of Anthropology, who led the study. 'Their brains also need to be bigger to deal with the extra visual input.

'Having bigger brains doesn't mean that higher latitude humans are smarter, it just means they need bigger brains to be able to see well where they live.'

The skulls used in the study dated back to the 1800s and included samples from indigenous populations of England, Australia, Canary Islands, China, France, India, Kenya, Micronesia, Scandinavia, Somalia, Uganda and the United States. -- REUTERS

Tech News: Belgium UFO That Puzzled Nasa Was Polystyrene Fake

Triangle Belgium UFO

BRUSSELS - AN UNIDENTIFIED flying object photographed high in the Belgian sky that puzzled even Nasa scientists turns out to have been a fake made out of foam, the man behind the hoax said on Tuesday.

Though scientists pored over the picture of a triangular-shaped flying saucer with four lights, allegedly photographed in April 1990 by a young worker, the mystery remained intact until the man's revelation on the RTL-TVI network.

Made of polystyrene in a matter of hours and photographed that night, the picture was released after several sightings of UFOs over Belgium in 1989 and 1990.

Then aged 18, the man identified only as Patrick said he and a few friends 'made it, painted it, hung it up and then photographed it'. The photo was the sharpest available to experts in a two-year period in which thousands of people across Belgium reported UFO sightings.

Several days after its release, a Belgian airforce plane was ordered to hunt down the UFOs across the country, but to no avail. Some believed the UFOs were new stealth fighters being tested by Nato.

'It's too easy to fool people, even with a cheap model,' said Patrick, adding he had decided it was time to come clean. -- AFP

Tech News: Alaska Scientists Make Squirrels Hibernate

A squirrel is pictured in Zeuthen, northeastern Germany. -- PHOTO: AFP

WASHINGTON - SCIENTISTS in Alaska said on Tuesday they have figured out how to make squirrels hibernate, a process that could be used to preserve brain function in humans who suffer strokes or heart attacks.

But the technique only worked in squirrels who were awakened by researchers during their hibernation season, not outside normal hibernation times, said the study in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Researchers at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, studied Arctic ground squirrels, giving them a caffeine-like substance to awaken them from hibernation. Another substance was given to them at various times of the year to see if it could stimulate parts of the brain that encourage a molecule called adenosine to attach itself to the receptors, causing sleepiness.

'When a squirrel begins to hibernate and when you feel drowsy it's because adenosine molecules have attached themselves to receptors in your brain,' said Dr Tulasi Jinka, lead author of the study. Adenosine slows nerve cell activity. Animals in hibernation experience very low body temperatures and take in little oxygen, but they suffer no brain damage. If scientists could master this process in humans, they could potentially prevent damage caused by severe trauma, when people stop breathing or suffer sudden heart attack or stroke.

But those days are still a long way off. The researchers found that they could induce torpor, or the state in which oxygen consumption falls to one per cent of resting metabolic rate and core body temperature approaches freezing, consistently only in squirrels who were awoken from hibernation in the midst of their sleeping season. Essentially, they could wake up a hibernating squirrel and then get it to go back to sleep.

However, when they tried to induce hibernation outside of the regular season, it worked in just two of six squirrels during the early hibernation season, but not in any during the summer when squirrels do not hibernate. The researchers are unsure what causes the brain to become sensitive enough to adenosine that it can enter a state of hibernation when the season is right. Their next step is to test the process in rats, whose systems are more similar to humans. -- AFP

Tech News: Walmart website adds movie streaming

Retail colossus Walmart on Tuesday added movie streaming to the offerings at its website. -- PHOTO: AP

SAN FRANCISCO - RETAIL colossus Walmart on Tuesday added movie streaming to the offerings at its website.

Viewing rights to films could be rented or bought at Walmart.com/vudu due to the integration of movie streaming service Vudu, which the US retailer bought in March of last year for a reported price of more than US$100 million ($120 million).

Online shoppers will be able to choose between DVD versions of films or digital Vudu titles that can be watched on hundreds of devices including high-definition televisions and PlayStation 3 video game consoles.

'This integration allows us to introduce more Walmart.com customers to digital entertainment and give them access to thousands of new release and popular movie titles immediately,' said Vudu general manager Edward Lichty.

'We're enabling customers to easily choose how they want to enjoy their entertainment content - whether that be through a physical DVD, digital streaming or both,' he continued in a release.

The move came as a monthly subscription price hike of 60 per cent by US online movie rental titan Netflix prompted the US firm's customers to seek options to the service. Netflix stock slipped more than seven per cent to US$260.95 on Tuesday after an earnings report a day earlier predicted some US subscribers would drop the Internet streaming and DVD-by-mail service. -- AFP