Horizons
Signs of snow on Mars
Phoenix Mars Lander captured its first signs of snowflakes falling from clouds high above the Red Planet.
This newest water sighting comes as the US space agency agrees to keep the rover running for as long as the frigid Martian winter will let it. (The three-month operation is now in its fifth month.)
The discovery, detected by one of the lander’s laser instruments, confirms NASA’s hunch that snow is possible on Mars.
“Nothing like this view has ever been seen,” says Jim Whiteway, lead scientist for the craft’s meteorological tools. In this case, the powder vaporized before it could hit the ground, but Mr. Whiteway says accumulation isn’t out of the question. They just have to find it to prove it.
Phoenix’s mission to Mars has uncovered several forms of proof that there’s frozen water on the now-arid planet. In July, it beamed home information on ice patches dwelling beneath the surface. This week, NASA also unveiled hints of calcium carbonate, the main ingredient in chalk and something that (at least on Earth) only forms with water. Scientists have detected carbonates elsewhere on Mars, but past sightings were all in places where there’s evidence that liquid water once flowed. The rover, on the other hand, landed in an “open plain” that's a good distance from any previous signs of running water.
The question now is whether any of this frozen water ever thaws – a potential clue in the hunt of life.
What can you do with a 12-million-digit prime number?
The scientific world is abuzz this week with news that researchers at UCLA have discovered a prime number with more than 10 million digits. The find qualifies them for a $100,000 prize from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and undeniable geek cred, but a decidedly unscientific survey of comments from around the web concludes that the overall response to the announcement is: So what?
Not being a math whiz myself by any means, I set out to find an answer to this question. Are monster prime numbers the key to clean energy? Negative. Can you prevent space shuttle accidents with a gigundo-prime? Survey says: no. But megaprimes will help rid your golf game of that nasty slice, right? Wrong again.
When a frustrated parent questioned the importance of her daughter learning about prime numbers in school, the helpful folks at Ask Dr. Math pointed out that primes are the basis of RSA encryption. Whenever online shoppers send personal information and credit card numbers across the web, prime numbers provide the backbone of that security.
Besides keeping your identity secure, primes have long been used as a math shortcut, helping with factoring, linear equations, and other things you probably haven't thought about since high school.
But why did the EFF offer $100,000 for the first person to discover a 10-million-digit-plus prime number? The hunt for large primes requires massive computing power – the production of which is prohibitively expensive for a single organization. Distributive computing – the same kind UCLA used to find their megaprime – makes a supercomputer out of many smaller individual machines, using the web to stitch all that power together. The EFF Cooperative Computing Awards provide an incentive for everyday Internet users to contribute to solving great scientific problems.
The method is the message.
"Prime numbers are important in mathematics and encryption, but the real message is that many other problems can be solved by similar methods," EFF co-founder John Gilmore is quoted as saying on the awards' website.
So, the important question isn't "What can you do with a 12-million-digit prime number?" but "What big real-world problem can benefit from everyday people volunteering their computers for a distributed-computing project?" The answers are already popping up in the search for extraterrestrial life, predicting climate change, and many others.
An all electric plug-in truck from Smith Electric Vehicles. (Gregory M. Lamb)
Alternative vehicles get their day
The world of alternative-powered vehicles is booming. Gas prices north of $4 this summer have gotten the attention not only of consumers, but businesses as well. From hybrid diesel-electric delivery trucks to electric-assisted cargo tricycles, natural gas and hydrogen fuel-cell power plants to the minuscule Smart Car, new ways to get people and cargo where they need to go efficiently are springing up.
The fourth annual AltWheels Fleet Day held Sept. 28 in Framingham, Mass., just west of Boston, put 45 alternative-powered vehicles on display, making it the largest alternative vehicle showcase on the East Coast. The 300 participants were triple the number of just a year ago, says event found Alison Sander. They included Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, Isuzu, and a host of aftermarket and specialized manufacturers. Listening to their pitches were corporate fleet managers, who are looking to save money on transportation costs as well as green-up their image.
Staples, the office supply giant, hosted the event at its headquarters. Staples has two hybrid delivery trucks built by Isuzu and souped up with electric motors from Enova that its testing right now. Smith Electric Vehicles, based in Britain, showed off a large delivery truck that's all electric and boasts an estimated cost-per-mile of 11.5 cents. It powers up overnight (4 1/2 to 6 hours) off the electric grid. Made for use on urban streets, it has a range of 130-150 miles per charge and a top speed of 50 m.p.h. Smith plans to begin selling the lithium-ion battery-powered vehicles in the US beginning next year.
John Viera, Ford's director of sustainable business strategies, laid out his company's future in a small meeting with members of the news media. Ford's looking at new technologies that will meet its criteria of being both affordable and capable of selling in high volume. The company is high on its new line of EcoBoost engines, which it expects will hike gas mileage by up to 20 percent and cut CO2 emissions by up to 15 percent. They draw on two proven technologies (direct fuel injection and turbo-charging) and will allow V8 engines to be replaced by V6s, and V6s replaced by V4s, without any lose of horsepower or torque. Ford aims to have EcoBoost engines available in 90 percent of its nameplates by 2013.
Meanwhile, it's looking for ways to inch economy higher in a number of small ways, including slimming down vehicle weight, six-speed transmissions (4 to 6 percent better fuel fuel economy), and lighter-weight electric power-assisted steering (3 to 5 percent better fuel economy). It's also expanding its hybrids to the Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan mid-size sedans, which will greatly increase the number of hybrid Fords on showroom floors. The company is eyeing plug-in hybrids but isn't diving in in a major way.
Ford is also planning to import some of its popular small vehicles now being sold only in Europe. They include the Fiesta sedan and Transit Connect small van, six small vehicles in all by 2012.
I got to drive a Ford Focus powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. I would have never known I was driving a fuel-cell-powered vehicle except for a slight whine from the rear of the car. Acceleration from stoplights was brisk.
Meanwhile, GM is letting consumers test a fleet of 100 hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles right now in a program called Project Driveway.
Horizon highlights - Space elevators, smiling for Google Earth, and when science meets politics
Our regular roundup of sci-tech stories from across the Web includes: how a hacker cracked Sarah Palin’s e-mail account, 20 percent of companies check the Facebook profiles of applicants, and why Wall Street’s warning bells need calibrating. Let’s kick it off:
Politics – When should scientists take sides?
"How political should campus academics get? Not in their private lives, but in their research agendas. Here in California the answer is often pretty ... political, as researchers take the side of the state in its continuing battle with Washington over the right to set local targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions." [via New Scientist]
Comfort gadgets – In tough economic times, video games console
"During the Great Depression, Americans flocked to the movies to escape the harsh realities of their daily lives. As the stock market tumbled and loved ones went off to war, Americans disappeared into dark theaters, where Shirley Temple sang and tap danced her way into their heavy hearts. Now, as the nation faces arguably the worst financial crisis since the Depression, video games may be playing the role movies once filled in hard economic times." [via NPR]
From the Monitor's Archives – Video games start to shape classroom curriculum: "Attention parents: Don't be surprised this school year if you tell your kids to stop playing video games and they respond, 'But it’s homework.' "
Space – Japan hopes to turn sci-fi into reality with elevator to the stars
"Now the finest scientific minds of Japan are devoting themselves to cracking the greatest sci-fi vision of all: the space elevator. Man has so far conquered space by painfully and inefficiently blasting himself out of the atmosphere but the 21st century should bring a more leisurely ride to the final frontier." [via Times Online]
Physics – Big bang or big bounce?: New theory on the universe's birth
"Einstein’s general theory of relativity says that the universe began with the big bang singularity, a moment when all the matter we see was concentrated at a single point of infinite density. But the theory does not capture the fine, quantum structure of spacetime, which limits how tightly matter can be concentrated and how strong gravity can become. To figure out what really happened, physicists need a quantum theory of gravity." [via Scientific American]
From the Monitor's Archives – Scientists challenge General Relativity. And Mr. Einstein wins again.: "Physicists assume that the laws they discover on Earth hold true throughout the universe and throughout all time. Their faith is only as good as the facts that support it. That support now is a little stronger."
Novelties – Russian town puts giant smiley on Google Maps
"Citizens of the Russian town Chelyabinsk calculated when the satellite, QuickBird, which takes images for Google Earth and Google Maps, would cross above their city and used people to make a giant smiley face." [via SlashDot]
What they did And how they did it. [via EnglishRussia]
MySpace's new music site. (Screen grab)
MySpace: Music piracy is a competing business model
MySpace launched its new music service Thursday morning. The site taps into millions of tunes from the four major record labels and allows users to buy the tracks or stream them free of charge.
The social network has long thrived as a hub for sharing music, but the new deal takes off the locks that usually come with mainstream digital songs and permits MySpace members to listen to entire tracks without spending a dime, then compile and share playlists of those free songs. Apple's iTunes store, on the other hand, only allows for 30-second clips.
One of the more interesting points to come out of MySpace’s unveiling is a quote from Steve Pearman, the site’s senior VP of product strategy:
"The goal is to make it as easy and compelling as stealing," he says on MTV.com. "If you give people something that's as easy as stealing and just as fun, that's the biggest defense against piracy."
This concept that online piracy should be viewed as a competing business model is one that – much like the new music service – is not original, but rarely made by anyone with a name as big as MySpace's.
The common line of argument says piracy is against the law (which, of course, it is) and should be snuffed out through enforcement, fines, and complicated software protections.
The last time I heard a major company make this point so clearly was in 2006, when Disney co-chair Anne Sweeney said:
"We understand now that piracy is a business model," said Sweeney, twice voted Hollywood's most powerful woman by the Hollywood Reporter. "It exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand. Pirates compete the same way we do - through quality, price and availability. We we don't like the model but we realize it's competitive enough to make it a major competitor going forward."
Google: 'May those who help the most win'
Here's heartening news: On Wednesday, Google kicked off its 10-year anniversary with a contest aimed at turning world-changing ideas into reality.
Called Project 10100 , the initiative promises $10 million to help get the winning idea off the ground. Entries will be judged on the following five criteria from the contest's announcement page:
Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
Longevity: How long will the idea's impact last?
Similar projects are out there – see Ideas That Can Change The World and Pop!Tech – but the arrival of Google's cash and cachet promises to shed new light on the next great thing.
Entries must be submitted by Oct. 20 and can include a 30-second YouTube video to help explain entrants' goals. Suggested idea categories include community building, education, energy, environment, health, opportunity, and shelter – but anything that doesn't fit into one of those is fair game as well. Voting on the 20 semifinalists begins Jan. 27.
Scientific hip-hop
Even though both science and journalism boil down to same idea – explaining how things work – our writing often comes out quite different from one another. Scientists – bless them – usually write for each other, using the dense vocabulary that comes with centuries of increasingly focused study. Reporters then try to translate this painfully precise text into something our parents or kids could understand.
But sometimes, it takes a musician to really explain complicated ideas to the masses.
For example, a YouTube video rapping about the ins and outs of Europe’s Large Hadron Collider got more than 3.5 million views since the clip launched in July. (That's a whole lot more hits than our coverage received.) While not the catchiest tune, the five-minute song received kudos from scores of science blogs and columnists, including the Monitor’s Tom Regan.
Hoping to attract its own viral attention, NASA commissioned a hip-hop history of Astrobiology. The space agency turned to Jonathan Chase, a regular science rapper and post-doctoral student at the University of Glamorgan in the UK.
"Rap and hip-hop music is my passion and I had the idea of combining it with science to make basic scientific ideas more accessible," Chase says in today's BBC story. "I hope that I can continue to create these raps to address the various aspects of science."
Here's the link to his music video.
The secret to a good science rap is weaving in both the serious and the playful, according to Professor Mark Brake, who heads the science communication course at Chase's alma mater. "[Chase] uses rap in story form," he told the BBC. "Just as science-fiction narrative comments on the world through a 'hard' or 'soft' science lens, rap comments on the world through a 'hard' or 'soft' emotional lens."
For more on finding that balance between learning and entertainment, check out a recent podcast by WNYC's RadioLab called "Making the Hippo Dance." That quirky title is their metaphor for how they jazz up the heavy language that often makes hard-core science impenetrable to anyone without a Ph.D.
"The question here is just how far can you go in the name of making an idea clear?" reads the online description. "What’s allowed? Is music allowed? Are sound effects allowed? What helps? What hurts? We play some never-released tape from the vault, and reveal a bit about what techniques we used to try and make it sing."
New in Gmail: the end of 'oops'
Feed the meter. Move the laundry along. Attach that pesky file.
Last week Google made it a little easier to remember one of the easiest things to forget, rolling out a nifty little feature to its popular web email client Gmail: a forgotten attachment detector.
Talk about an embarrassment saver! With the feature turned on, messages that mention an attached file – but don't actually have one – pop up a reminder when a user hits send. The feature worked most of the time when I tested it out, but Amit at Pulse2.0 found flaws when he didn't use "attached" in the body of the email.
The feature, developed by Google intern and UC Berkeley computer science student Jon Kotker, is part of Gmail Labs, the company's sandbox for experimental new developments. As such, it's totally opt-in and could disappear or stop working anytime. I hope it stays. It's one of those "Duh, why didn't I think of that" features that make using the service that much more friendly. To enable it, Gmail users can go to Settings and click on the Labs tab.
Also available at Gmail Labs (and news to me) is a "take a break" feature that blanks out the Gmail window for 15 minutes and, in true Google fashion, encourages users to "Take a walk, get some real work done, or have a snack." Clever, especially since it was Google's policy of encouraging workers to take 20 percent of their time to work on projects away from their main concentration that gave birth to Gmail, which now ranks third in registered webmail users, behind Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo.
Bringing home iPhone: lessons learned
Am I the only one who missed the memo that surprises were about to end?
There are no more "Hey, haven't heard from you in a while – let's catch up sometime." No "Sorry, you have been outbid on eBay item 48937721." Not even any more "Your mailbox is over its size limit," or "Great deal on solution to embarrassing male troubles."
No one told me that trading in my old cell phone for one that can surf the web and check email on the fly would leave me with nothing to look forward to when I got home to my computer.
My poor laptop! I used to learn things at my laptop. Heck, I used to open my laptop. A typical evening would find me coming home, kicking off my shoes, and taking a peek at my email inbox. These days the laptop sits at home, closed next to the couch. The emails or Facebook notifications that it used to hold have already been seen the second they arrived on my iPhone. Now it seems as if I only open my laptop to update my phone.
And just as fellow blogger Chris Gaylord discovered when he brought home his shiny bundle of joy last July: Now that the iPhone is in my life, I no longer have unanswered questions. (Well, I'm still working on the whole meaning of life thing, but pretty much everything else is settled with a simple Google search on my new phone. And I'm pretty sure Google has a solution for that other problem in the works.)
These first couple of weeks with the iPhone have been all about what I can do. And while I've got to say that it's pretty cool to be constantly plugged into this technology – staying up-to-the-minute on what's going on in the world and my inbox – I see some drawbacks.
Where does community go if everyone's plugged into something that's going on somewhere else? How do you appreciate the fall foliage when you're immersed in the action of a 3.5-inch screen?
Am I really missing something if I receive that Facebook friend request at 5:45 and not 2:30? And who's going to miss me if I respond to that email within six hours instead of two minutes?
It is with these points in mind that, though it pains me to do so, I'm going to tone down my iPhone use. I'll still use the GPS-aided mapping feature on trips to places I've never been, but I'm turning off the urgent buzz it emits each time a new email comes in. I'm going to relish frenzied debate instead of instant answers on subjects that are easily Googleable. And I'm going to leave the thing in my pocket when I'm around the neighborhood, ready to spot the little surprises we only notice when we're alert enough to see the details.
What’s next in the Palin hacking case?
The case into who hacked Governor Sarah Palin's email account continues. FBI agents searched the off-campus apartment of David Kernell, a 20-year-old economics major at the University of Tennessee.
The weekend sweep included breaking up a party thrown at Kernell’s apartment and issuing subpoenas to three of his roommates, according to an unnamed source quoted by the local WBIR TV station.
After finding an online post that details how the person broke into Palin’s email account, the FBI traced the hacker’s screen name – Rubico – to an email address used by Kernell.
Internet-security experts say the digital trail left by Rubico is pretty sloppy. “He might as well have taken a picture of his house and uploaded it,” Web-security guru Ken Pfeil told the AP. “He should have just set up a big beacon that said, ‘Here’s my house,’ or confessed.”
The hacker also showed the vulnerability of many web-mail services, such as the vice presidential candidate’s Yahoo email. Rubico describes sneaking into the personal account by guessing the simple security questions set up by the governor: where she met her husband, her birthday, and home Zip code. After answering them correctly, Yahoo issued the hacker a new password, “popcorn.”
A quick Google search could uncover such data for many public figures, yet many of us still use such easy hurdles to secure our email, banking, and credit-card accounts.
With little new news on the subject to report, many media reports have turned their attention to Kernell’s father, state Rep. Mike Kernell, the Democratic chairman of the Tennessee Government Operations Committee. "I was not a party to anything of this nature at all," he told the AP. "I wasn't in on this – and I wouldn't know how to do anything like that."
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