Technology

The secret's out: MI5 look for a real-life Q
Home affairs correspondent BRITISH security service MI5 is recruiting a real-life Q to equip its agents with the gadgets James Bond would dream of. The job of chief scientific adviser is being advertised on MI5's website, with the successful applicant e

Pentagon preps for economic warfare
The Pentagon sponsored a first-of-its-kind war game last month focused not on bullets and bombs — but on how hostile nations might seek to cripple the U.S. economy, a scenario made all the more real by the global financial crisis. The two-day event nea

Southeast growers ponder future with little history for guidance
In my job I get to meet a lot of interesting people, mostly farm people, many come from a farming legacy. Being a fourth or fifth generation farmer is common and farming land that has been in their family over a hundred years is not too uncommon. Moder

Warren Buffett takes charge
Warren Buffett hasn't just seen the car of the future, he's sitting in the driver's seat. Why he's banking on an obscure Chinese electric car company and a CEO who - no joke - drinks his own battery fluid. Warren Buffett is famous for his rules of inve

Report: Ethanol raises cost of nutrition programs
WASHINGTON (AP) — The increased use of ethanol could cost the government up to 0 million for food stamps and child nutrition programs, a congressional report says. Higher use of the corn-based fuel additive accounted for about 10 percent to 15 percent

Portable 'E-Bombs' Could Take Down Jetliners
Weapons experts and techno-thriller fans are familiar with the concept of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) — a supermassive blast of electricity, usually from a nuclear blast high above ground, that fries electronic circuits for miles around, crippling com

Heated Controversy
Do firefighters believe 9/11 conspiracy theories? In the new season of the FX drama Rescue Me, firefighter Franco Rivera espouses the belief that 9/11 was "an inside job." According to a Sunday New York Times article, the show's writers added this asse

Solution To Drought: It's In The Genes
California is short of more than jobs, money and optimism these days. Several years of drought have dried up reservoirs, parched fields, damaged forests and caused regulators around the state to impose restrictions on water usage. California agricul

Deeper Digital Penetration: The expanding invasion of the naked body scanners.
The naked body scanners are taking over. When we first checked in on them two years ago, the scanners, which see through clothing, were being deployed at a single airport. A few months later, they were upgraded to millimeter-wave technology, which deli

Pentagon spends 0 million to fix cyber attacks
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon says it spent at least 0 million in the last six months responding to and repairing damage from cyber attacks and other network problems.

Fast Food Calorie Counter for iPhone
You were being totally sincere last New Year’s Eve when you yanked that lampshade off your head and shouted out some semi-lucid babble to nobody in particular about this being the year you finally lose some weight. And though you’ve definitely worked broc

Why should society be worried by the domination of video games?
It is thought The Hypodermic Needle Theory is more applicable to the video games medium than other forms of media. The theory came about in the late 1940’s and 50’s when radio and television ownership was increasing; and people were concerned about media

Diebold Admits ALL Versions of Their Software Delete Ballots Without Notice
Even the audit log system on current versions of Premier Election Solutions’ (formerly Diebold’s) electronic voting and tabulating systems — used in some 34 states across the nation — fail to record the wholesale deletion of ballots. Even when ballots are

Weary of Looking for Work, Some Create Their Own
SAN FRANCISCO — Alex Andon, 24, a graduate of Duke University in biology, was laid off from a biotech company last May. For months he sought new work. Then, frustrated with the hunt, he turned to jellyfish. In an apartment he shares here with six roomm

NSA Dominance of Cybersecurity Would Lead to 'Grave Peril', Ex-Cyber Chief Tells Congress
The government's national cybersecurity efforts would be in "grave peril" if they were dominated by the intelligence community, said Amit Yoran, former head of the Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division. Yoran told a House sub

Top 10 Myths about Sustainability
When a word becomes so popular you begin hearing it everywhere, in all sorts of marginally related or even unrelated contexts, it means one of two things. Either the word has devolved into a meaningless cliché, or it has real conceptual heft. “Green” (or,

New Tactics in the Fight against Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis is second only to HIV as the worldwide cause of death from infection, and the pandemic is growing in many places. New tools are enabling scientists to study the TB-causing bacterium in greater detail, offering unprecedented insight into th

Crop Scientists Say Biotechnology Seed Companies Are Thwarting Research
Biotechnology companies are keeping university scientists from fully researching the effectiveness and environmental impact of the industry’s genetically modified crops, according to an unusual complaint issued by a group of those scientists.

Eating Isn’t Option When Minnesota Corn Burns in Houston Cars
Today, burning crops like corn, soybeans and sugar cane for fuel is policy in the U.S., Brazil and the European Union — while almost 1 billion of the world’s 6.8 billion people are hungry, the most in a generation. About 95 percent of what Vis grows feeds

Japan's Panasonic to cut 15,000 jobs, shut plants
TOKYO (AP) — Panasonic Corp. said Wednesday it will slash as many as 15,000 jobs and shut 27 plants worldwide, joining a slew of major Japanese companies announcing deep cuts as the global slowdown batters the world's second-largest economy. The world's

Can tech to clean up nuclear waste also help remove arsenic from drinking water?
Arsenic removal from drinking water is a priority for local water authorities, given that long-term exposure has been linked to a host of serious health problems, including cancer, nervous system damage and atherosclerosis (inflammation) in the arteries

U.S. becomes top wind producer, solar next
LONDON (Reuters) - The United States overtook Germany as the biggest producer of wind power last year, new figures showed, and will likely take the lead in solar power this year, analysts said on Monday.

Fantastic Voyage, Revisited: The Pill That Navigates
Philips Research has developed a prototype for a pill that can navigate toward a specific spot in the body and deposit its medicine there, radioing dispatches to the doctor as it travels.