Watchman Newsletter

Carrier IQ, Mobile Services Grilled over Spyware Charges

PC World (Link) - Ian Paul (December 2, 2011)

Carrier IQ, the mobile diagnostic company recently accused of installing rootkits on more than 140 million devices worldwide, says it’s using its software for good, not evil. But some critics suggest CIQ’s software may violate federal wiretap laws, a charge CIQ vehemently denies.

Meanwhile, the mobile industry including device makers and carriers are trying to put as much distance as possible between their products and Carrier IQ.

Congress is also getting on in the action with Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) demanding that CIQ explain its business practices within the next 12 days.

How We Got Here

In mid-November, security researcher Trevor Eckhart published a report accusing CIQ of installing malware on more than 140 million devices worldwide. Eckhart later published a video on YouTube showing CIQ’s software secretly running in the background and monitoring a variety of handset activity on an HTC device including key presses, browsing history, SMS logs, and location data.

Carrier IQ said its software is merely a diagnostic tool to improve service quality.

Fujitsu Develops World's First Personal Authentication Technology to Integrate Palm Vein and Fingerprint Authentication

Fujitsu (Link) (June 1, 2011)

Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. today announced the development of the world’s first biometric authentication technology that combines data on palm vein patterns with fingerprint data from three fingers. By employing both palm vein pattern and fingerprint data, the technology enables the rapid identification of a given individual out of data from a million people, processing the match within two seconds.

This technology makes it possible to construct biometric authentication systems that do not require ID cards and that can be tailor-made to fit different sized groups, from small-scale room access control to large-scale social platform systems. Moreover, the technology can be easily deployed by simply adding palm vein authentication to the fingerprint authentication systems that are already in widespread use.

One Brain, Hundreds of Eyes: Darpa Plots Manhunt Master Controller

Wired (Link) - Adam Rawnsley (May 31, 2011)

Thought military tracking technology couldn’t get any creepier? Hold onto your tinfoil hats and hide behind the nearest curtain because the next generation of manhunting gear just took another step closer to reality.

The Pentagon’s bleeding-edge research shop, DARPA, announced this week that it awarded a $14 million contract to defense contractor SAIC to build Insight, its system-of-systems effort to mashup snooping sensors that’ll find human prey on the battlefield.

Massive Desalination Plant Gets Go Ahead

 Bridges For Peace (Link) - Isranet - Edgar Asher (May 23, 2011)

Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz signed an agreement today approving the construction and operation of a massive new desalination facility near Ashdod [to turn seawater into usable water]. The plant, which will be one of the largest in the world, will, on completion, mean that almost 70% of Israel’s water needs will be met by desalinated sources. The new facility will cost $400 million and is expected to be completed in 2013. The go ahead follows an international tender which was awarded to IDE Technologies, an Israeli world leader in water technologies and the Singapore-based Hutchinson Water International Holdings Pte. The two organizations will design, plan and run the plant.

Investments have also been made by the European Investment Bank, Bank Hapoalim and Bank Leumi [Hapoalim and Leumi are two Israeli banks]. This will be the fourth desalination plant in Israel which has been built with the cooperation of the private sector.

Uzi Landau the National Infrastructure Minister said at the signing at the finance ministry. “The efforts of the National Infrastructure Ministry have come to fruition and the true beneficiary of these efforts is the Israeli citizen. We fight for every drop of water,” Landau said.

“Like the ‘finance minister of nature,’ I am proud to say that I am responsible for the fact that even after six years of drought, while our neighbors in the Middle East gave water to their citizens by means of tankers, residents of Israel are opening the tap and getting their water.” †

China Claims Air Supremacy With Its New J-20 Stealth Fighter

Business Insider (Link) - Robert Johnson (May 10, 2011)

A close look at China’s J-20 stealth fighter, by Washington think tank The Jamestown Foundation, calls the plane a “game changer,” that will render all air defense in the region obsolete.

With no refueling of the J-20, Japan, South Korea, and former Air Force bases in the Philippines will all be open to attack; with refueling, United States operations in Guam become easily acquired targets.

This capability allows China to take full control of both “island chains” that form the country’s self-defined, maritime defense perimeter.

The study suggests that J-20s will be the tactical equal of U.S. F-22A Raptors as well as F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, and be capable of delivering large “glide bombs” that will “remain unseen through the whole delivery maneuver, effecting complete surprise.”

Man’s Quest to Become God: The Newest Plan

Olive Tree Ministries (Link) - Heidi Swander (February 2, 2011)

Warning:  What you are about to read sounds like a new spin-off episode of Star Trek, but it is not.  It is really happening in real time with real people, and it will very likely have a tremendous impact on the future of our world and on the seven-year Tribulation period that is fast approaching.

Our subject is Transhumanism:  The development of the post-human or neo-human.  In an article in his quarterly publication, “Forcing Change,” Carl Teichrib, long-time researcher and writer on globalization, explains, “Based on the premise that evolution is true, Transhumanism looks to shape the human species through the direct application of science . . . By employing technology we can take hold of the evolutionary process and change it as we desire, thus becoming masters of our future.”

Breakthrough promises $1.50 per gallon synthetic gasoline with no carbon emissions

Gizmag (Link) - Mike Hanlon (January 26, 2011)

UK-based Cella Energy has developed a synthetic fuel that could lead to US$1.50 per gallon gasoline. Apart from promising a future transportation fuel with a stable price regardless of oil prices, the fuel is hydrogen based and produces no carbon emissions when burned. The technology is based on complex hydrides, and has been developed over a four year top secret program at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford. Early indications are that the fuel can be used in existing internal combustion engined vehicles without engine modification.

According to Stephen Voller CEO at Cella Energy, the technology was developed using advanced materials science, taking high energy materials and encapsulating them using a nanostructuring technique called coaxial electrospraying.

“We have developed new micro-beads that can be used in an existing gasoline or petrol vehicle to replace oil-based fuels,” said Voller. “Early indications are that the micro-beads can be used in existing vehicles without engine modification.”

“The materials are hydrogen-based, and so when used produce no carbon emissions at the point of use, in a similar way to electric vehicles”, said Voller.

The technology has been developed over a four-year top secret programme at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, UK.

The development team is led by Professor Stephen Bennington in collaboration with scientists from University College London and Oxford University.

Professor Bennington, Chief Scientific Officer at Cella Energy said, “our technology is based on materials called complex hydrides that contain hydrogen. When encapsulated using our unique patented process, they are safer to handle than regular gasoline.” †

Google Comes Under Fire for ‘Secret’ Relationship with NSA

Yahoo! News (Link) - PC World - Grant Gross (January 25, 2011)

Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group largely focused in recent years on Google’s privacy practices, has called on a congressional investigation into the Internet giant’s “cozy” relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration.

In a letter sent Monday, Consumer Watchdog asked Representative Darrell Issa, the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to investigate the relationship between Google and several government agencies.

The group asked Issa to investigate contracts at several U.S. agencies for Google technology and services, the “secretive” relationship between Google and the U.S. National Security Agency, and the company’s use of a U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration airfield in California.

Federal agencies have also taken “insufficient” action in response to revelations last year that Google Street View cars were collecting data from open Wi-Fi connections they passed, Consumer Watchdog said in the letter.

The end of credit cards is coming

CNN Money (Link) - Blake Ellis (January 24, 2011)

Credit cards may soon be as outdated as vinyl records. (Remember those?) And this is the year that the slow, steady march to oblivion begins.

You can already use your iPhone, Droid or BlackBerry to buy a hotdog at the ballgame, buy your Starbucks latté, or give a friend a few bucks by Bumping phones. But by the end of the year you may not even think twice about reaching for your phone to pay at the register instead of fumbling for your credit card.

“Your plastic card hasn’t changed since the age of the vinyl records,” said Michael Abbott, CEO of Isis, a new mobile payment network. “This is the chance to bring payments forward from the plastic age and the vinyl records age to the digital age.”

While companies have been experimenting with contactless mobile payments for years, 2011 is expected to be the year the technology really takes off. That’s because millions of phones capable of making contactless payments are expected to be shipped out in 2011.

As a result, this pay-by-phone market is forecast to make up $22 billion in transactions by 2015, up from “practically none” last year, according to research firm Aite Group.

Obama to hand Commerce Dept. authority over cybersecurity ID

CNet News (Link) - Declan McCullagh (January 7, 2011)

President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.

It’s “the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government” to centralize efforts toward creating an “identity ecosystem” for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.

That news, first reported by CNET, effectively pushes the department to the forefront of the issue, beating out other potential candidates, including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. The move also is likely to please privacy and civil-liberties groups that have raised concerns in the past over the dual roles of police and intelligence agencies.

The announcement came at an event today at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, where U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Schmidt spoke.

Universal Translators in the Next Few Years?

Singularity Hub (Link) - Drew Halley (December 29, 2010)

The universal translator is a sci-fi staple: Star Trek made it infamous. Star Wars had C3PO. Hitchhiker’s Guide had the babel fish. Stargate and Dr. Who both had some variation of a voice-to-voice translating device. In some ways, the future is already here: Google Translate can turn around a workable text translation almost instantly (automatically in Chrome), and it’s letting the multilingual web talk to itself. Word Lens will even translate text you see in real time as augmented reality on your smartphone. Text translation is all well and good, but when will the holy grail arrive? When will voice-to-voice translation become a reality? When can you finally toss your Rosetta Stone software?

Actually, it’s already here – it’s just not as smooth as you might have hoped (yet). All the basic pieces of software necessary to a universal translator have already arrived: speech recognition (voice-to-text), language translation (text-to-text), and speech synthesis (text-to-voice). In fact, it’s already being employed in a number of sectors using current technology. Granted, the process is pretty clunky, but it’s here and it works.

Scientists unveil chip which could make desktop computers 20 times faster

Daily Mail UK (Link) (December 28, 2010)

Scientists have created an ultra-fast computer chip which is 20 times faster than current desktop computers.

Modern PCs have a processor with two, four or sometimes 16 cores to carry out tasks.

But the central processing unit (CPU) developed by the researchers effectively had 1,000 cores on a single chip.

The developments could usher in a new age of high-speed computing in the next few years for home users frustrated with slow-running systems.

And the new ‘super’ computer is much greener than modern machines - using far less power - despite its high speed.

Scientists used a chip called a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) which like all microchips contains millions of transistors - the tiny on-off switches which are the foundation of any electronic circuit.

But FPGAs can be configured into specific circuits by the user, rather than their function being set at a factory.

Science of man-made life can proceed: White House

Breitbart (Link) - AFP (December 16, 2010)

The White House on Thursday said the controversial field of synthetic biology, or manipulating the DNA of organisms to forge new life forms, poses limited risks and should be allowed to proceed.

An expert panel convened by President Barack Obama advised vigilance and self-regulation as scientists seeks ways to create new organisms that could spark useful innovations in clean energy, pollution control and medicine.

The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues “concluded that synthetic biology is capable of significant but limited achievements posing limited risks,” it said in its first report.

“Future developments may raise further objections, but the Commission found no reason to endorse additional federal regulations or a moratorium on work in this field at this time.”

Smart grids line up in fight against climate change

EU Observer (Link) - Andrew Willis (November 19, 2010)

Smart grids are increasingly seen as a crucial weapon in the world’s fight against climate change, with the EU among those rallying behind the new technology.

With global energy consumption set to rise dramatically over the next fifteen years, not least as an additional 350 million Chinese citizens move into cities, the need to use electricity more efficiently has never been higher, say industry experts.

“Smart grids are a lot about empowering us to engage with energy,” says Scott Lang, CEO of SilverSpring Networks, a California-based company leading the way in developing technology that allows customers to view their electricity usage at any given point, including from individual appliances.

While this enables households to cut bills by using energy-consuming devices at low-rate times of day, it also enables utility companies to cut peak-time demand and avoid costly blackouts.

Israel’s secret new weapon?

YNet News (Link) - Ofer Petersburg (July 13, 2010)

Imagine for a moment what the battlefield will look like in the future. Unmanned planes flying through the air; robots fighting on the ground; smart missiles hunting down targets. Now imagine that none of this can be detected on radar screens.

It may sound fictional, but it’s happening. An Israeli company called Nanoflight is currently developing a special paint that makes drones, missiles, or war craft simply disappear. Or, to be more precise, they become very difficult to detect.

The critical stage in developing the paint, which was developed in a nanotechnology lab, has recently concluded, and a successful test run was conducted this week. For the test run, a thin layer of the material was painted on dummy missiles, and radar waves aimed at them had a difficult time registering them.

The paint particles don’t make the missile’s detection on the radar disappear completely, but make it exceedingly difficult to positively identify the object as a missile. In the future, this development will allow any missile or jet significantly decreased radar detection.

Even though they may not entirely disappear from radar screens, this technology is a considerably more cost-effective method to evade radar detection than purchasing an American stealth plane for $5 billion.

Missing piece found in particle puzzle: scientists

Reuters (Link) - Robert Evans (May 31, 2010)

Research scientists announced on Monday they had identified the missing piece of a major puzzle involving the make-up of the universe by observing a neutrino particle change from one type to another.

The CERN physics research center near Geneva, relaying the announcement from the Gran Sasso laboratory in central Italy, said the breakthrough was a major boost for its own LHC particle collider programme to unveil key secrets of the cosmos.

According to physicists at Gran Sasso, after three years of monitoring multiple billions of muon neutrinos beamed to them through the earth from CERN 730 kms (456 miles) away, they had spotted one that had turned into a tau neutrino.

Behind that scientific terminology lies the long-sought proof that the three varieties of neutrinos -- sub-atomic particles that with others form the universe’s basic elements -- can switch appearance, like the chameleon lizard.

The discovery is important, scientists say, because it helps explain why neutrinos arrive at earth from the sun in apparently far smaller numbers than they should under the Standard Model of physics that has held sway for some 80 years.

The fact that neutrinos are now proven to switch identities -- as posited by two Moscow scientists in the late 1960s based on earlier work by a U.S. physicist -- suggests that other types of neutrinos could exist but slip detection.

Christian Biochemist: First ‘Synthetic Cell’ Strengthens Case for Design

The Christian Post (Link) - Eric Young (May 23, 2010)

A biochemistry expert at the science-faith think tank Reasons to Believe is among those hailing the recent creation of the first-ever “synthetic cell,” though not for the same reasons as most.

“From an apologetics standpoint, this is exciting work that I’m happy to see pursued and would like to see even more effort devoted toward this because it’s giving us a very powerful case for [Intelligent] Design,” said Dr. Fazle Rana on Friday, referring to the idea that holds certain aspects of nature are so complex that they could not have come about by evolution alone but instead point to an intelligent designer.

“In fact, I even would go so far as to say that this is even a brand new class of arguments for Design,” he added during RTB’s flagship podcast.

On Thursday, a group of scientists announced that it had successfully replaced all of the natural DNA inside a cell with laboratory-synthesized DNA, creating the first-ever “synthetic cell.”

The team, led by Craig Venter of the J. Craig Venter Institute, presented its findings in an article published on the website of the journal Science, run by the non-profit American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Google admits Wi-Fi data collection blunder

BBC (Link) - Maggie Shiels (May 15, 2010)

Google has admitted that for the past three years it has wrongly collected information people have sent over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks.

The issue came to light after German authorities asked to audit the data the company’s Street View cars gathered as they took photos viewed on Google maps.

Google said during a review it found it had “been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open networks.”

The admission will increase concerns about potential privacy breaches.

These snippets could include parts of an email, text or photograph or even the website someone may be viewing.

In a blogpost Google said as soon as it became aware of the problem it grounded its Street View cars from collecting Wi-Fi information and segregated the data on its network.

New RFID Tag Could Mean the End of Bar Codes

Wired (Link) - Lisa Grossman (March 26, 2010)

Lines at the grocery store might become as obsolete as milkmen, if a new tag that seeks to replace bar codes becomes commonplace.

Researchers from Sunchon National University in Suncheon, South Korea, and Rice University in Houston have built a radio frequency identification tag that can be printed directly onto cereal boxes and potato chip bags. The tag uses ink laced with carbon nanotubes to print electronics on paper or plastic that could instantly transmit information about a cart full of groceries.

“You could run your cart by a detector and it tells you instantly what’s in the cart,” says James M. Tour of Rice University, whose research group invented the ink. “No more lines, you just walk out with your stuff.”

RFID tags are already used widely in passports, library books and gadgets that let cars fly through tollbooths without cash. But those tags are made from silicon, which is more expensive than paper and has to be stuck onto the product as a second step.

“It’s potentially much cheaper, printing it as part of the package,” Tour says.

Google to enlist NSA to help it ward off cyberattacks

The Washington Post (Link) - Ellen Nakashima (February 4, 2010)

The world’s largest Internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.

Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google -- and its users -- from future attack.

Google and the NSA declined to comment on the partnership. But sources with knowledge of the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google’s policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans’ online communications. The sources said the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users’ searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data.

The partnership strikes at the core of one of the most sensitive issues for the government and private industry in the evolving world of cybersecurity: how to balance privacy and national security interests. On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair called the Google attacks, which the company acknowledged in January, a “wake-up call.” Cyberspace cannot be protected, he said, without a “collaborative effort that incorporates both the U.S. private sector and our international partners.”

Is a cashless society on the cards?

Telegraph UK (Link) - Philip Aldrick (January 11, 2010)

Steve Perry, executive vice president of Visa Europe, has a different take on the folding stuff packed in our wallets that most of us take for granted. “Cash is expensive,” he says. “We need to be using it less.”

Expensive? Vintage wines, maybe. Designer clothes, yes. Modern art, almost certainly. But cash? “Why do you think supermarkets introduced cashback?” Perry asks rhetorically.

He has me stumped there. I tell him I always thought of it as a service for overdrawn students to drive a few more sales through the tills.

“No,” he responds politely. “It’s because they want cash out of the system so there is less to manage. Processing a transaction on a card can be cheaper than handling cash.”

Perry is a leading cheerleader for the cashless society. It’s hardly a surprising role, but its an argument he is finding increasingly easy to make. Last month, for example, the Payments Council announced to anguished outrage that in 2018 the cheque would be dead.

“There are many more efficient ways of making payments than by paper in the 21st century, and the time is ripe for the economy as a whole to reap the benefits of its replacement,” Paul Smee, chief executive of the Payments Council, said.

Tiny nano-electromagnets turn a cloak of invisibility into a possibility

Physorg (Link) (December 22, 2009)

A team of researchers at the FOM institute AMOLF (The Netherlands) has succeeded for the first time in powering an energy transfer between nano-electromagnets with the magnetic field of light.

This breakthrough is of major importance in the quest for magnetic ‘meta-materials’ with which light rays can be deflected in every possible direction. This could make it possible to produce perfect lenses and, in the fullness of time, even ‘invisibility cloaks.’ 

The AMOLF researchers - Ivana Sersic, Martin Frimmer, Ewold Verhagen and Vidi laureate and group leader Femius Koenderink - published their results in the authoritative journal Physical Review Letters.

The artificial ‘meta-materials’ studied by the researchers consist of very small U-shaped metal ‘nano-rings.’  The electromagnetic field of light drives charges back and forth, thereby inducing an alternating current in each U shape. The tiny opening at the top of the ring makes sure that the current zooms around at the frequencies of light. In this way, each ring becomes a small but strong electromagnet, with its north and south poles alternating 500 billion times per second.

Cancer treatment takes a giant step forward as scientists crack code

Times Online (Link) - Mark Henderson (December 17, 2009)

The complete genetic codes of two human cancers have been mapped for the first time. The move could herald a medical revolution in which every tumour can be targeted with personalised therapy.

The exhaustive genetic maps, which catalogue every DNA mutation found in two patients’ tumours, will transform treatment of the disease. It has been described as the most significant milestone in cancer research in more than a decade.

Scientists predict that by about 2020 all cancer patients could have their tumours analysed to find the genetic defects that drive them. This information would then be used to select the treatments most likely to work.

Insights from the genomes will also lead to the development of powerful drugs to target DNA errors that cause cancer and highlight ways in which the disease can be prevented. Cancers would be diagnosed and treated according to their genetic profiles rather than their position in the body.

“The pace at which genomics is moving is probably the most exciting thing that’s gone on in cancer research in more than a decade,” said Professor Sir John Bell, President of the Academy of Medical Sciences. “These cancer genome projects are a major landmark, as significant as the sequencing of the human genome itself.”

The Dollar Bill Goes High-Tech

Fox News (Link) - John Brandon (December 16, 2009)

Counterfeiting has never been easier. All it takes these days is a fairly inexpensive color printer, some graphic design software and a willingness to spend a few decades in jail if you get caught.

But desperate times call for desperate measures, so criminals struggling in a tough economy and savvy with advanced printing equipment have figured out how to replicate bank notes. Some bleach $1 bills and print $100 bills; others use holographic wrapping paper available at any dollar store. And it's not just the little guy. The big guys — the major crime syndicates — have set up complex printing operations to print illegal tender in large quantities.

Fake bills look remarkably similar to the real McCoy, with intaglio (textured printing) and holographic markings.

“Internationally, we have seen a marked increase in counterfeiting in the last five years,” says Bonnie Schwab, a consultant who worked for the Bank of Canada and has advised the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group. “Causes are improvement in technology available to the general public and to the traditional counterfeiters. More and more people with little skill in design and printing are able to download images and print to desktop printers.”

VeriChip’s Merger With Credit Monitoring Firm Worries Privacy Activists

Wired (Link) - Penn Bullock (December 9, 2009)

Remember VeriChip, the Florida company that once dreamed of injecting its human-implantable RFID microchips in everyone from immigrant guest workers to prison inmates?

We haven’t heard much from the company since a dipping stock price nearly got it delisted from the NASDAQ in March. But it’s still alive, and in November it pulled off a seemingly incongruous acquisition. Now called PositiveID, the new company is a merger between VeriChip and Steel Vault, the people behind NationalCreditReport.com.

With a human-implantable microchip maker now running a credit-scoring and identity-theft-protection website, privacy activists are worried again. “The attraction to investors is the potential for synergies,” says Mark Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “You have to anticipate over time there will be an attempt to integrate the services.”

“Sci-fi wise, you could have a chip read by a scanner that determines your credit-worthiness,” says Evan Hendricks, editor of Privacy Times. “Or you could have a credit card implant.”

Intel’s experimental chip to change the face of processing?

The Tech Herald (Link) - Stevie Smith (December 3, 2009)

Intel Corporation, the world’s largest manufacturer of computer processors, has this week whipped the covers off an experimental single-chip Cloud Computer platform intended for scaling on-chip performance, communication and power consumption for decades to come.

The chip is particularly noteworthy for carrying the most Intel Architecture (IA) computing engines ever integrated onto a single CPU by the Santa Clara-based giant. And, while it boasts 48 cores – up to 20 times more than inside current Intel Core processors – the Cloud Computing chip only consumes as much electricity as two standard household light bulbs.

According to Intel, the long-term research goal connected to its experimental chip “is to add incredible scaling features to future computers that spur entirely new software applications and human-machine interfaces.”

In terms of the technology’s scheduled arrival in the mass market, Intel has said the company plans to engage both industry and academia in 2010 when it shares more than 100 of the forward-looking processors in order to enable more widespread “hands-on research” in developing software applications and programming models.

Growing back a lost limb

Israel21c (Link) (November 30, 2009)

An Israeli researcher has developed a biologically active  ‘scaffolding’ of soluble fibers which could be used to regenerate lost or damaged bone and tissue.

If a lizard loses its tail, it grows right back, but for human beings a lost limb can never be replaced. Now, however, thanks to breakthrough research from Israel, we may one day be able to regenerate lost or damaged human limbs as effectively as a lizard replaces its tail.

Prof. Meital Zilberman of Tel Aviv University has developed a new biologically active  ‘scaffold’ made from soluble fibers, which could be used to help humans replace lost or missing bone or tissue.

The artificial and flexible scaffolding releases growth-stimulating drugs to the place where new bone or tissue is needed. It connects tissues together in much the same way as scaffolding is used to surround an existing building when additions to that building are made.

With more research, says Zilberman, it could also serve as the basic technology for regenerating other types of human tissue, including muscle, arteries, and skin.

“The bioactive agents that spur bone and tissue to regenerate are available to us. The problem is that no technology has been able to effectively deliver them to the tissue surrounding that missing bone,” explains Zilberman of the university’s Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Large Hadron Collider progress delights researchers

BBC News (Link) - Paul Rincon (November 22, 2009)

Researchers working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) say they are delighted with the progress made since the machine restarted on Friday.

One official said the collider had done more in a few hours than it did in five days of operations last year.

The LHC is being used to smash together beams of protons in a bid to shed light on the nature of the Universe.

Housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel under the Franco-Swiss border, it is the world's largest machine.

During the experiment, scientists will search for signs of the Higgs boson, a sub-atomic particle that is crucial to our current understanding of physics. Although it is predicted to exist, scientists have never found it.

“It's all been pretty positive so far... Now, [the team] is knuckling down to the hard work” | James Gillies, Cern

The machine was heavily damaged when an electrical fault caused a tonne of liquid helium to leak into the tunnel just nine days after it was first launched in September last year.

NASA’s Wise Eye Gets Ready To Survey the Whole Sky

PR Newswire (Link) (November 17, 2009)

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or Wise, is chilled out, sporting a sunshade and getting ready to roll. NASA’s newest spacecraft is scheduled to roll to the pad on Friday, Nov. 20, its last stop before launching into space to survey the entire sky in infrared light. [Launched into space December 14, 2009]

Wise is scheduled to launch no earlier than 9:09 a.m. EST on Dec. 9 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It will circle Earth over the poles, scanning the entire sky one-and-a-half times in nine months. The mission will uncover hidden cosmic objects, including the coolest stars, dark asteroids and the most luminous galaxies.

“The eyes of Wise are a vast improvement over those of past infrared surveys,” said Edward “Ned” Wright, the principal investigator for the mission at UCLA. “We will find millions of objects that have never been seen before.”

The mission will map the entire sky at four infrared wavelengths with sensitivity hundreds to hundreds of thousands of times greater than its predecessors, cataloging hundreds of millions of objects. The data will serve as navigation charts for other missions, pointing them to the most interesting targets. NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory, and NASA’s upcoming Sofia and James Webb Space Telescope will follow up on Wise finds.

“This is an exciting time for space telescopes,” said Jon Morse, NASA’s Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Many of the telescopes will work together, each contributing different pieces to some of the most intriguing puzzles in our universe.”

Brussels welcomes US move toward global governance of internet

EU Observer (Link) - Leigh Phillips (October 1, 2009)

The body responsible for managing the development of the internet, Icann, has cut its umbilical cord to the US government, a move the European Union has been demanding for four years.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees domain names - the .com, .eu, .org and so on at the end of a web address - as of 30 September will no longer be subject to review by the US Department of Commerce.

Instead, independent review panels appointed by Icann Governmental Advisory Committee (Gac) and Icann itself with the involvement of governments around the world. will perform this task.

Since 2005, the EU has been calling for reform of the governance of the internet, saying that the internet is a global resource and should not be tied to one national government - a position echoed by many other countries and a number of companies.

In June of this year, the European Commission raised the volume on the issue, publishing a policy document that an independent judicial body be set up, which information society commissioner Viviane Reding described at the time as a "G12 for internet governance," which would serve as a "multilateral forum for governments to discuss general internet governance policy and security issues."

Wednesday's move comes close to satisfying the EU demands, and Ms Reding welcomed the development.