A new material developed by Dutch scientists has made its way into soft body armor. Dyneema SB61 is a fibre made from an extremely high grade of the common plastic polyethylene. Laundry baskets, grocery bags and milk bottles are all made from polyethylene. It is the simplest of the plastics. Polyethylene molecules are long chains that can be branched or straight. The length and straightness of the chains and the purity of the plastic determines how strong it is. High grade polyethylene has been used to make bulletproof vests for years, but this new material is stronger pound for pound than everything else on the market
Fungus growths have been found in many extreme environments, including the Chernobyl reactor walls. Some fungi have been found whose growth is enhanced by radiation
The Internet Engineering Task Force has approved DomainKeys, a way to detect spoofed email, as an internet standard. We’ll all need to upgrade our email systems to support it, but it sounds like a promising spam blocker — via lifehacker
Gmail upgraded the maximum attachment size from 10 MB to 20 MB. Gmail was quite forgiving and you could send more than 10 MB in some cases, but now it’s possible to send at least 20 MB in one message. Of course, few mail providers will accept a such a big message, so it’s safe to send messages bigger than 10 MB to other Gmail accounts, to Yahoo Mail Plus or to other premium accounts
People infected with hepatitis C can be cured with existing treatments, researchers have discovered. Standard therapy with pegylated interferon and ribavirin removed all detectable virus in 99% of patients for up to seven years
As solar panels become more available, affordable and easy to use, the technology has been embraced by Amish communities here in Southern Maryland, in Pennsylvania, Ohio and elsewhere. While connecting to the public power grid is generally frowned upon as an unhealthy intrusion on their simple lifestyle, the Amish have long considered energy sources such as diesel and gasoline engines — and now solar power — a legitimate way to fire up buggy lights and sewing machines and meet the rest of their modest electrical needs
A state-controlled broadcast center in Russia has just seen the result of censorship restrictions imposed by the Kremlin. In a rare show of protest a group of journalists all resigned stating that they could no longer work under the harsh restrictions imposed by the state
A Darth Vader mask has been tendered as evidence as the Darwin Magistrates Court hears charges against Lord Mayor Peter Adamson. The charges relate to the purchase of a $900 fridge and $1,800-worth of gift vouchers which he bought in June last year, then claimed reimbursement from the mayoral donations fund. The prosecution alleges the vouchers were used to buy a number of items including make-up, clothes and a Darth Vader voice changer
Nine people involved in a community portal Napisy.org were held for questioning by the Polish police force. They will be probably be accused of publishing illegal translations of foreign movies, which is forbidden by Polish copyright law
We were rudely awakened the other night by Olaf (the cat) depositing a slimy frog on our faces at 3am. Happily N had been watching a TV show about the care and feeding of frogs earlier that day, so she leapt out of bed, crafted a frog habitat out of an old pot and a cake net, then went back to sleep.
The next morning we went out to the local permaculture garden and released the frog. I’d just bought a new camera, so I snapped a photo of it before we sent it on its way. When I loaded it into The GIMP and zoomed in on the picture, I thought the camera’s JPEG compression was busted, because the frog’s skin looked weird and fractal. But when I looked at the rest of the photo (skin, fabric, etc) the compression was gorgeous, so guess frog skin is weirdly fractal for camouflage purposes.
See for yourself (the image below has been compressed again as the original is many a megabyte):
The Federal Opposition says it will demand answers in Senate Estimates hearings about the cost of the latest Government advertising campaign on industrial relations. The Senate starts a fortnight of hearings today and Labor says it will use them to question the Government on its plans for areas including nuclear power and APEC as well as advertising
Microsoft has agreed to buy the digital marketing firm Aquantive, in what will be its biggest ever acquisition. The software giant spent almost $6 billion acquiring the agency, in its first bid to tackle the online advertising market
Chinese archaeologists studying ancient rock carvings say they have evidence that modern Chinese script is thousands of years older than previously thought. State media say researchers identified more than 2,000 pictorial symbols dating back 8,000 years, on cliff faces in the north-west of the country. They say many of these symbols bear a strong resemblance to later forms of ancient Chinese characters
Mars has abandoned plans to use animal products in its chocolate, and has apologised to upset
vegetarians. The firm had said it would change the whey used in some of its products from a vegetarian source to one with traces of the animal enzyme, rennet. The Vegetarian Society organised a campaign against the move, asking members to voice their concerns to parent company Masterfoods. Mars said it became very clear, very quickly
that it had made a mistake. In just one week, more than 6,000 people bombarded the company, which produces the Mars, Snickers, Maltesers and Galaxy brands, with phone and e-mail complaints
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed a bid by Australian mining giant BHP Billiton to build a permanent natural gas terminal off the state’s coastline. In a letter to the US Maritime Administration, Mr Schwarzenegger agreed with earlier rejections of the proposal by the state Lands Commission and the California Coastal Commission. Under the proposal, BHP would have moored a massive floating terminal 22 kilometres off the coast of Malibu, west of Los Angeles, in order to unload liquefied natural gas and process it before pumping it ashore. But the plan met with furious opposition from environmentalists
At least 25 countries around the world block Web sites for political, social, or other reasons as governments seek to assert authority over a network meant to be borderless
A new species of sea anemone has been found in the carcass of a whale that sunk to the ocean floor off the coast of Monterey, California, marking the first discovery of one of these filter-feeding marine animals living in a so-called whale fall. The anemone, called Anthosactis pearseae, is small, white and roughly cube-shaped. It’s about the size of a human molar and even looks like a tooth with small tentacles on one side
A record haul of half a million silver and gold coins from a 17th Century shipwreck may have been found just 40 miles from Land’s End. US treasure hunters said the coins, worth an estimated £253m, were recovered in the Atlantic Ocean. But Odyssey Marine Exploration, who described it as the largest find of its kind, refused to pinpoint the location. US coin expert Dr Lane Brunner said there was evidence the shipwreck was lying off the Cornish coast
Veronica Mars is no more. The smart CW dramedy starring blond pixie Kristen Bell as a tough teenage sleuth with wisecracks and style to spare has been cancelled after three seasons
Next week’s release of AACS, which is intended to fix the currently compromised version, has a small problem. The patched version has already been cracked. The hacker collective continues to adapt to AACS revisions and is demonstrating a capacity to assimilate new volume keys at a rate which truly reveals the futility of resistance. If keys can be compromised before HD DVDs bearing those keys are even released into the wild, one has to question the viability of the entire key revocation model
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