December 06, 2002 -
Smallpox
shot side effects feared -
Study on volunteers finds pain, flu-like
symptoms common, By Robert Bazell, NBC
NEWS CORRESPONDENT,
Tia Neeley was among the first volunteers
to test the smallpox vaccine after Sept.
11, 2001. A year ago, NBC News reported on
her inoculation. “My arm got pretty sore
for about two days, around seven to eight
days after vaccination,” Neeley said. Hers
was a mild reaction, but for many it was
not so easy...
December 06, 2002 -
The future of computer interfaces - Tech Update,
Human-Computer Interfaces From 2003 to 2012, By Alexander Linden,
Human-computer interfaces will rapidly improve during the next decade.
The wide availability of cheaper display technologies will be one of the
most transformational events in the IT industry...
December
17, 2002 -
Breathtaking Saturn -
NASA, Earth and Saturn will have
their closest encounter in
nearly 30 years. December
13, 2002: Thirty years ago,
Earth and Saturn had an
extraordinary close encounter.
The ringed planet was only 1.2
billion km from Earth--about as
close as it can get--and its
rings were tipped toward us. The
view through a telescope was
simply breathtaking...
December
17, 2002 -
Immobots Take Control - By Wade
Roush, December 2002/January 2003,
Technology Review, From photocopiers
to space probes, machines injected with
robotic self-awareness are reliable
problem solvers. The Mars Polar Lander
never had a chance. At 12:02 p.m.
California time on December 3, 1999, after
an 11-month journey to Mars, the NASA
spacecraft slewed its antenna away from
Earth in preparation for entry into the
Martian atmosphere. That was the last time
mission controllers heard from it.
According to the scenario a NASA accident-
review board deemed most likely, the
Lander dropped out of orbit, deployed its
parachute, and began firing its descent
engines to slow its fall—just as it was
programmed to do. But as the craft’s three
landing legs automatically unfolded,
sensors in the legs sent false signals to
the Lander’s control software, indicating
that it had touched down. Not programmed
to deal with such a scenario, the software
ignored signs that the craft was still
aloft and, at an altitude of 40 meters,
shut down the descent engines. Gravity
took over, and the delicate craft slammed
into the rocky Martian surface with the
energy of a high-speed car crash...
December
04, 2002 -
Red Hat chief: Linux will take desktop
market share from MS - By
Margie Semilof, Senior News Writer,
SearchWin2000.com, BOSTON -- Though
Linux still faces significant challenges
from its competitors, Red Hat Inc.'s top
executive this week outlined the strides
that open-source has made and discussed
where it fits relative to other operating
system technologies. At the Enterprise
Linux Forum Conference & Expo on Tuesday,
Matthew J. Szulik, chairman and chief
executive officer at Raleigh, N.C.-based
Red Hat, talked up the expansion of Linux
from academia to commercial acceptance in
global enterprises, its scalability on
devices ranging from handhelds to
mainframe computers, and its appearance in
distributed environments and blade
servers. "Szulik is encouraging people
that critical computing and Linux belong
in the same paragraph, if not the same
sentence," said Dan Kusnetzky, vice
president of system software research at
Framingham, Mass.-based International Data
Corp. Szulik said that the challenge Linux
continues to face is on the desktop and
with the file format issues of
compatibility and conversion with
Microsoft's Windows. In the past, the
desktop was never even part of a
conversation when organizations were
considering a move to Linux. "Now it comes
up in every discussion," Szulik said...
December
03, 2002 -
Molecular memory bank draws closer
- BBC, One day you could be storing
data inside molecules. A group of
scientists have found a way to manipulate
the atoms in a molecule to store more than
1,000 bits of information. The researchers
managed to briefly store a small image in
the molecule before extracting it with the
same method they used to put it there.
Despite the success, the scientists say it
will be a long time before their work
results in working molecular memories...
December
07, 2002 -
Get ready
for a ‘Gem’ of a sky show - By Joe Rao, SPACE.COM, Dec. 6 — Less than a month after the Leonid
meteor shower, another excellent display is just around the corner. The
reliable, annual Geminid meteor shower is scheduled to reach its peak
during the pre-dawn hours of Dec. 14...
December
05, 2002 -
Was Mars
once a hot-and-cold hell? - By Robert Roy Britt, SPACE.COM,
Mars in the popular imagination is a planet that was once warm and
wet, a place that might have fostered life. But new research shows how
these imagined pleasant periods were brief, hellish and punctuated by
utter catastrophe...
December
02, 2002 -
Plague of pimples blamed on bread - Exclusive from New
Scientist Print Edition, Eating too much refined bread and cereal,
rather than chocolate and greasy foods, may be the culprit behind the
pimples that plague many a youngster. That is the theory of a team led
by Loren Cordain, an evolutionary biologist at Colorado State University
in Fort Collins. Highly processed breads and cereals are easily
digested. The resulting flood of sugars makes the body produce high
levels of insulin and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1)...
December
05, 2002 -
Africa's new tech warriors - By Alfred Hermida, BBC News
Online technology staff, As part of a weekly series on women in
business, BBC News Online talks to women in Africa who have taken up a
career in technology, a field normally dominated by men...
