Age of Altruism

Babies as young as 18 months old can tell when adults need help and will
often do their best to assist.

Lifting things, opening doors, picking up objects.

These early signs of helpfulness is a sign of humsns' altruism.. This is
rare in the animals. Chimps also display such kind of helpfulness. This
suggests that the evolutionary roots of altruism go back to common
ancestors shared beteen humans and chimpanzees.

Tests also show that if an adult struggles to pick up a dropped
clothespin in front of an infant, it quickly crawls over picks up the
clothespin and hands it over to the adult. Chimpanzees performed a
similar task. But human babies were found to perform better at opening
up doors and stacking books in case the adult had his ands full.

Motion - Gravity - Geometry

Gravity is not due to force, but it is a manifestation of curved space
and time, the curvature being produced by mass-energy content of the
spacetime.

One of the defining features of general relativity is the idea that
gravitational force is replaced by gravitational geometry. The
phenomenon in classical mechanics which were ascribed to the actions of
force of gravity are taken in general relativity to represent inertial
motion in curved spacetime.

Inertial observers, that is the observers in inertial motion, for
example freefalling objects, can accelereate w.r.t each other. For
instance, if we take the case of two freely falling balls, same mass,
same shape, on the opposite sides of the earth, they'd accelerate w.r.t
each other as they approach other.

So their acceleration, or more precisely their motion, would be a
manifestation of the geometry of spacetime in which they exist.

Protect the Civilization

Some day, scientists have been telling us for some years now, we'll have to deal with an incoming asteroid or comet that would destroy civilization at worst or wipe out a city at least.

Big impacts have occurred before, and there will be more. But we don't know enough about space rocks and their composition to plan properly for deflecting or destroying such a menace. Turnabout proved to be fair play when NASA's mission - Deep Impact, slammed a probe into Comet Tempel 1 on the 4th of July.

The upshot..... This comet was fluffy, unlike others that have been studied up close.

Meanwhile, a group of scientists and astronauts prodded NASA to visit asteroid Apophis, which has a slight chance of hitting us a few decades hence. NASA's responsive: A purely scientific mission might be considered, but we have plenty of time to mount a diversion if further observations show this thing would really hit.

Life on Mars

It extends back to last year and looks like the sort of mystery that'll keep scientists scratching their heads for years to come.

The air of Mars seems to contain pockets of methane in doses that should not exist. Perhaps it's the belchings of subsurface microbes. They support that view with new evidence for blocks of underground ice in the same region as the methane, based on observations by ESA's Mars Express.

The ice could be supplying the precious liquid water needed to support the biology, they figure. Other astronomers think the reasoning is very speculative, however.

Reason

I fear naught but the state of ignorance--
 Death comes; for all the end is inevitable;
 But only one who's dumb will, in nonchalance
 From folly make the rest thus miserable.

 Yet with knowledge, a light shines in cognition--
 Not trivia-- knowledge of self, world, and all;
 Fathoming, with age, brings wisdom's inception...
 Fearlessly learning, answering Reason's call.

 Awareness begins with cortical abstraction;
 Broad connection allows integrated thought;
 The high view of cognition, thinkers call "Reason";
 Thus, "light", metaphorically, is Reason wrought.

 I shrink not but from Ignorance's foolish vision--
 Life comes; for all, beginning's universal;
 Only the light of Reason can illumine
 From start to finish, the wise and beneficial.

New processor computes at light speed

A superfast computing processor that uses light, not electrons, to perform calculations has gone on sale for the first time. Lenslet, the Israeli company that developed the processor, say its light speed calculations deliver the power of a supercomputer in a single device.

The device is called Enlight and can perform 8000 billion arithmetic operations per second, about 1000 times faster than a standard processor. Previously this type of processor was only available to highly financed government laboratories.

EnLight will be useful across a broad range of applications, from military projects to compressing high definition video images. Enlight is not a general purpose processor like a Pentium. Instead, each processor will be custom-built to perform a specific set of tasks, and will not be programmable.

Much research has been done to try to exploit the much faster speed at which light travels compared to electronic signals, but most commercial work in this area has focused mainly on optical interfaces. These devices allow fibre optic and related systems to communicate with traditional electronic systems.

Strictly speaking, EnLight is a hybrid device, housing both electronic and optical circuits, but it is the optical processing that make it so fast. It allows you to do a massive level of operations in parallel.

The processing in the Enlight device is carried out using a process called vector matrix-multiplication, which allows calculations to be performed on 256 optical inputs.

The beams from 256 lasers are added or multiplied together when shone on a matrix device called a spatial light modulator. The outputs are then read by an array of light detectors.

Lenslet would not put a precise price on how much an EnLight processor would cost, because each will be made to order.

Pluto mission lifts off

A probe named New Horizons was launched on January 21, 2006 to explore the only unexplored of the solar system, Pluto.Its on a trek of 9 and 1/2 years and is the fastest object to ever leave the earth's atmosphere at 58000km/h or 16km/sec.New Horizons is the size of a toy piano. It'll slingshot off Jupiter's gravity to add another 145000km/h boost.If successful, the probe will reach Pluto, and Charon, its largest moon, in July 2015.The ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the asronomer who discovered Pluto have been placed aboard New Horizons.

Hindi-vital for US national security

Bush Administration has identified Hindi among half a dozen critical foreign languages vital for its national security. It now plans to spend millions of dollars in the coming years to recruit experts of these languages — Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Persian and Hindi — to teach students from kindergarten to universities.

The National Security Language Initiative aimed to strengthen the national security and prosperity in 21st century was launched by the US President, George Bush, at the US University Presidents Summit on International Education, on Wednesday.

With an initial proposed budget of $114 million in 2007, the National Security Language Initiative, the project has three broader goals. First is to expand the number of Americans mastering "critical need" languages and start at a younger age.

Second is to increase the number of advanced-level speakers of foreign languages with an emphasis on "critical needs" languages.

By 2009 it aims to produce 2,000 advance speakers of Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Persian, Hindi and Central Asian languages.

Finally, the initiative aims to increase number of foreign language teachers and resources by establishing the National Language Service Corps for Americans with proficiencies in critical languages to serve the nation.

Croc jaws

The jaws of a crocodile are powerful enough to crush the bones of a small animal, but so weak in opening that they can be hel together by hand.

Porn in Pockets, thank the iPod

Sex even sells in tiny packages, especially when its portable.

An online social network of amateur pinup girls said that it logged 50000 downloads of sexy featurettes-three to five minute video clips- in the first 24 hours targetting the new iPod-toting crowd.

Apple Computer Inc's new video-playing iPod unvieled the viewing of vidoe flicks, whose use has been largely restricted to the privacy of homes and theatres, in open public of parks and mass transit, by all ages. Porn is no doubt a big business on the Web.

The internet accounted for $2.5 billion of the adult industy's $i4 billion in US revenues last year, which is the same as revenues from cable and satellite pay-per-view showings. Now, the adult video producers like Vivid Entertainment are offering high resolution skin flicks specifically for use on iPod and other portables.

iTunes online already features several hot and heavy podcasts, audio downloads geared to portability. The Apple officials have even refused requests for interviews on whether they might offer adult content on iTunes for iPod owners.

Children are much quicker to grasp technology that their parents, and thus its now easier than ever for minors to view X-rated content on portabes like Sony PlayStation Portable, iPod. The arena is wide open, unfiltered, unrestricted, for adult content. Children are very aware of where it is and how to down load it.

But I think its fine.