iTunes 10

Not a huge abruptness here, but Apple's just appear iTunes 10 alongside all those new iPods, complete with a cast new logo that assuredly ditches the CD. What is something of a surprise, however, is the standout affection of iTunes 10: Ping. That's Apple's yield on a music-centered amusing arrangement (think Last.fm), which will let you chase humans (including artists), authorize a "circle of friends," column comments, analysis out custom song and anthology charts, and even acquisition over 17,000 concert listings (which you can of advance let association apperceive your attending). What's more, Ping is aswell authoritative the jump to the iPhone and iPod touch, and it's accessible with iTunes 10 today. Head on accomplished the breach for the abounding columnist release. Not a huge abruptness here, but Apple's just appear iTunes 10 alongside all those new iPods, complete with a cast new logo that assuredly ditches the CD. What is something of a surprise, however, is the standout affection of iTunes 10: Ping. That's Apple's yield on a music-centered amusing arrangement (think Last.fm), which will let you chase humans (including artists), authorize a "circle of friends," column comments, analysis out custom song and anthology charts, and even acquisition over 17,000 concert listings (which you can of advance let association apperceive your attending). What's more, Ping is aswell authoritative the jump to the iPhone and iPod touch, and it's accessible with iTunes 10 today. Head on accomplished the breach for the abounding columnist release.

Don't talk to aliens, warns Stephen Hawking

The Aliens are out there and Earth had bigger watch out, at atomic according to Stephen Hawking. He has appropriate that extraterrestrials are about assertive to abide, but that instead of gluttonous them out, altruism should be accomplishing all it that can to abstain any contact. The suggestions appear in a new documentary alternation in which Hawking, one of the world’s arch scientists, will set out his latest cerebration on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

Alien life, he will suggest, is about assertive to abide in abounding added locations of the universe: not just in planets, but conceivably in the centre of stars or even amphibian in interplanetary space.

Hawking’s argumentation on aliens is, for him, almighty simple. The universe, he credibility out, has 100 billion galaxies, anniversary absolute hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is absurd to be the alone planet area activity has evolved.

“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The absolute claiming is to plan out what aliens ability in fact be like.”

The answer, he suggests, is that a lot of of it will be the agnate of bacilli or simple animals — the array of activity that has bedeviled Earth for a lot of of its history.

One arena in his documentary for the Analysis Channel shows herds of two-legged herbivores browsing on an conflicting cliff-face area they are best off by flying, chicken lizard-like predators. Another shows aglow beaming amphibian animals basic all-inclusive shoals in the oceans anticipation to underlie the blubbery ice blanket Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter.

Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to advance on to a austere point: that a few activity forms could be able and affectation a threat. Hawking believes that acquaintance with such a breed could be adverse for humanity.

He suggests that aliens ability artlessly arrest Earth for its assets and again move on: “We alone accept to attending at ourselves to see how able activity ability advance into something we wouldn’t wish to meet. I brainstorm they ability abide in massive ships, accepting acclimated up all the assets from their home planet. Such avant-garde aliens would conceivably become nomads, searching to beat and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that aggravating to accomplish acquaintance with conflicting contest is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens anytime appointment us, I anticipate the aftereffect would be abundant as if Christopher Columbus aboriginal landed in America, which didn’t about-face out actual able-bodied for the Native Americans.”

The achievement of the documentary marks a celebration for Hawking, now 68, who is paralysed by motor neurone ache and has actual bound admiral of communication. The activity took him and his producers three years, during which he insisted on afterlight ample chunks of the Software and blockage the filming.

John Smithson, controlling ambassador for Discovery, said: “He capital to accomplish a programme that was absorbing for a accepted admirers as able-bodied as accurate and that’s a boxy job, accustomed the complication of the account involved.”

Hawking has appropriate the achievability of conflicting activity afore but his angle accept been antiseptic by a alternation of accurate breakthroughs, such as the discovery, back 1995, of added than 450 planets orbiting abroad stars, assuming that planets are a accepted phenomenon.

So far, all the new planets begin accept been far above than Earth, but alone because the telescopes acclimated to ascertain them are not acute abundant to ascertain Earth-sized bodies at such distances. Another advance is the analysis that activity on Earth has accurate able to colonise its a lot of acute environments. If activity can survive and advance there, scientists reason, again conceivably boilerplate is out of bounds.

Hawking’s acceptance in aliens places him in acceptable accurate company. In his contempo Wonders of the Solar System BBC series, Professor Brian Cox backed the idea, too, suggesting Mars, Europa and Titan, a moon of Saturn, as acceptable places to look. Similarly, Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, warned in a address beforehand this year that aliens ability prove to be above animal understanding.

“I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive,” he said. “Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.”

Stephen Hawking's Universe begins on the Discovery Channel on Sunday May 9 at 9pm

Middle-aged women accept bigger memories than men

London, Mar 12 : A new abstraction has accepted what abounding men already knew: women's memory is better than males'.

In the University of London study, which included 9,600 humans in their 50s, it was begin that middle-aged women accept bigger memories than men.

In the aboriginal experiment, volunteers analysis listened to 10 words and were accustomed two account to anamnesis as abounding as possible. The additional analysis appropriate them to account the aforementioned 10 words about 5 account later.

After analyses, boffins begin that females denticulate about 5 per cent added than men in the aboriginal analysis and about eight per cent added in the second. In addition test, which complex allotment as abounding animals as accessible in one minute, men and women had identical scores. Each could name 22, on average, letters The Daily Express.

Non-smokers, including ex-smokers, aswell outscored smokers in the aboriginal of the "word recall" tests. (ANI)

Mobil Terbang Sudah Bisa di Pesan

Gambaran sebuah mobil yang bisa beroperasi di darat mungkin itu sudah biasa tapi bagaimana bila mobil yang juga bisa beroperasi diangkasa terbang tinggi di langit. Emm... sulit dibayangkan rasanya bila mobil dibilang "bisa terbang", tapi mimpi untuk menghadirkan mobil terbang sebentar lagi akan menjadi kenyataan. Sebab, mobil terbang yang dinamai Transition Roadable Aircraft ini akan mulai dijual ke pasaran pada 2011 mendatang.

Awal tahun ini dunia melihat penerbangan pertama sebuah mobil yang disebut Transition Roadable Aircraft. Dan seperti dikutip dari Leftlanenews, Jumat (1/1/2010), sang pembuat, Terrafugia, akan mulai memasarkannya dua tahun mendatang. Sebenarnya isu mengenai kehadiran 'mobil terbang' sudah ada bertahun-tahun. Namun hingga kini belum ada pengembangan kearah yang lebih serius agar kendaraan tersebut bisa digunakan di jalan darat dan udara.

Dan Terrafugia telah berhasil membuat satu prototipe kendaraan operasional yang sanggup mengudara sejauh 724 Km. Dan ketika dijalan darat mobil mampu dipacu hingga 185 km/jam. Transition Roadable Aircraft dilengkapi sayap yang dapat melipat secara otomatis dalam waktu 30 detik, mirip dengan waktu yang dibutuhkan untuk membuka dan menutup atap mobil convertible.

Ketika sayap ini ditekuk, maka mobil akan berjalan normal layaknya kendaraan roda empat lain dan tetap muat jika diparkir di sebuah garasi mobil normal. "Semua itu guna menjadikan kendaraan tersebut cukup fleksibel untuk terbang ke berbagai tempat," tutur Terrafugia.

Bila tertarik, ia mengatakan mobil terbang ini dapat dipesan sekarang dengan membayar uang muka sebesar 10.000 USD (mungkin sekitar Rp94 jutaan). Namun belum disebutkan berapa harga pasti mobil terbang ini.

DNA evidence could solve mystery of Grégory Villemin's death

A portrait of four-year-old Gregory Villemin is seen on his tomb at the Lepanges-sur-Vologne,
France cemetery in the Vosges region in this 1987 photo

On an overcast October afternoon in 1984, four-year-old Grégory Villemin disappeared from the sandbox where he was playing near his home in rural eastern France.

A few hours later, while the police and his parents searched desperately, someone telephoned his uncle. “I've taken my revenge,” the caller said. “I've killed the child.”

Grégory's body, his wrists and feet bound with rope, was fished from a nearby river that night, setting off a sensational murder mystery that gripped France for years. It spawned a deadly family feud, a second killing, charges of judicial and police misconduct, a spate of slander suits and a flood of books and movies.

But, for all the publicity and attention, the case was never solved.

Now, 25 years later, a new DNA analysis of evidence locked away for years in a police storeroom has once again made the “little Grégory affair” front-page news.

Using tests and techniques unknown at the time of the crime, scientists have isolated traces of DNA on an anonymous letter claiming responsibility for the boy's murder. Investigators believe that letter was sent by the same person, or persons, who had been mailing threats to the Villemin family for at least a year before Grégory's death.

The discovery has raised hopes of a resolution to the case, which was reopened officially late last year after his parents pleaded with the court to re-examine the murder in light of advances in DNA analysis and forensics.

Prosecutors and genetic sleuths are urging caution, saying that isolating DNA on crime-scene evidence was only a first step in what could still be a long and possibly fruitless search for the killer.

“The principal risk in this case is that the evidence has been contaminated by people who handled it after the crime,” said Jean-Paul Moisan, director of a DNA testing institute in Nantes that unsuccessfully looked for traces on Grégory's clothing and other crime-scene items in 2000.

The letter had been kept in good condition, in a dry dark place, over the years. But Mr. Moisan, in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper, warned that the letter was probably handled by postal clerks, police officers, judges, handwriting experts and journalists who may have left their own DNA on it.

An initial analysis of the letter, which was mailed to Grégory's grandfather nine months after his death, appeared to put to rest at least one suspicion that long shadowed the case.

A judge in Dijon, who is overseeing the new investigation, said that a man's DNA was found on the letter and a woman's DNA was uncovered under the stamp on the envelope. Neither trace, he said, was a match with either of the boy's parents.

Grégory's mother, Christine Villemin, at one point was arrested for his murder. The charges were dropped, but not before Mrs. Villemin became the object of much pseudo-analysis by French intellectuals and journalists. She went on to accuse other family members of complicity in her son's death in her own book.

The first person to be charged, though, was Bernard Laroche, a cousin of the boy's father. He was arrested after his 15-year-old sister-in-law told police she had seen him lure Grégory away from home on the day he died. Mr. Laroche denied it and the girl later recanted.

But he did not survive long enough to defend himself in court. Five months after the murder, while at home awaiting trial, Grégory's father, Jean-Marie Villemin, stalked him and shot him dead with a rifle.

Mr. Villemin was convicted and spent nearly four years in prison. A court later found that the local police were negligent in not protecting Mr. Laroche.

A number of French newspapers, writers and journalists who wrote about them all were sued for slander repeatedly over the years by both the Laroche and Villemin families.

The investigating judge said the new DNA evidence would first be used to look for a match among the initial suspects in the case. But eventually it could be tested against a national data base that contains one million entries with the DNA of people arrested and convicted of crimes.

Resource : www.theglobeandmail.com

TECHNO / Science

Meet the two year old genius Oscar Wrigley

MEET the two-year-old with the brain of Einstein. Oscar Wrigley has an IQ of at least 160 . . . and at two years and five months, is the youngest child to be accepted into Mensa, the international organisation for people with exceptional intelligence. His score is equal to Einstein and acclaimed British scientist Stephen Hawking.

Oscar's parents say their little genius began talking at nine months and by 18 months was reciting the alphabet in the bath.

By the time he turned two, he had a vocabulary stretching to thousands of words, while most children his age would have mastered only about 50.

Now Oscar lectures his amazed mum and dad about the reproductive cycle of penguins and conducts classical music symphonies as he listens, identifying individual instruments.

His father Joe, 29, is fully expecting the day to come "when he turns around and tells me I'm an idiot".

"Oscar is a child of very superior intelligence," said Dr Peter Congdon, from the Gifted Children's Information Centre in London.

"His abilities fall well within the range sometimes referred to as intellectually gifted. He demonstrated outstanding ability."

Dr Congdon ranked the toddler in the 99.99th percentile, meaning he is one in 100,000 in terms of his intelligence.

Oscar lives with his IT specialist dad and stay-at-home mum Hannah, 26, in Reading, England.

Both parents have normal IQs, although Oscar's maternal uncle, Jonathan Masters, was a child prodigy who began a university degree in computing aged just 13.

"He is always asking questions," Joe said. "Every parent likes to think their child is special, but we always knew there was something particularly remarkable about Oscar."

Assessors at the Gifted Children's Information Centre said Oscar, an only child, is one of the brightest youngsters they have come across.

His intelligence is literally off the scale, with the 45-minute Stanford-Binet test being unable to measure higher than 160.

He will need to be tested further in the years to come to establish his exact score.

Oscar's parents say they encourage him to follow any activity in which he shows interest.

He is already showing a gift for music and has asked for a saxophone for Christmas, despite the fact he is far too small to be able to play.

"He will sit in the back of the car listening to the Indiana Jones soundtrack and he'll be conducting with his fingers," Joe said.

"Then he'll say, 'Here comes the brass with the French horn' and then 'Here come the strings'."

Hannah said that Oscar "amazes everyone".

"We knew at 12 weeks he was extremely bright. He was unusually alert," she said.

"At four months, I would hold up two items of clothing and he would pick out which he wanted to wear.

"His vocabulary is amazing. He's able to construct complex sentences. The other day he said to me, 'Mummy, sausages are like a party in my mouth'."

A spokesman for Mensa confirmed he was the youngest boy to join the society, which requires a minimum IQ of 148.

Mensa UK chief executive John Stevenage said: "Oscar shows great potential. Converting that potential to achievement is the challenge for his parents and we are delighted that they have chosen to join the Mensa network for support."

resource www.news.com.au