TOP 100 SCIENCE SITES
| |||
|
| |||
| |||
|
| |||
| Scientists ponder devil move to fight tumour disease Tasmanian devil researchers will meet next week to decide whether to move some of Tasmania's healthy devils in a bid to increase resistance to the deadly facial tumour disease. abc.net.au |
US military offers $40,000 challenge • Cash prize for first to locate 10 secret balloons• Scheme attempts to examine power of online networksFor most of us, social networking sites are just for fun - checking what our friends are doing, organising our weekends or playing games when the boss is not looking. But the stakes for users of sites like Facebook and Twitter are set to increase dramatically tomorrow, as the US government launches a competition that offers cunning web users the chance to win thousands of dollars.In a nine-day challenge run by Darpa, the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, members of the public are being offered a grand prize of $40,000 if they successfully use the internet and social networks to track down a series of balloons hidden across America.Under the rules of the competition, known as the Darpa Network Challenge, 10 large red balloons will be launched simultaneously at secret location across the United States tomorrow. Players have until December 14 to find out where they were located, and the first person - or group of people - to track them all down will scoop the jackpot, the equivalent of more than £24,000.The rules are relatively loose: the balloons, which each measure eight feet in diameter, will be placed at fixed locations that are easily accessible and visible from nearby roads but will only be visible for one day. More than 300 teams have already signed up to take part and officials expect a number - from offering a reward online to sifting through various social networking sites to scan for sightings of the balloons."The most innovative ideas we probably haven't heard about yet, because there is an incentive to keep them secret," said Peter Lee, director of the agency's transformational convergence technology office.On the surface, the premise seems a little wacky for a government agency that uses its annual budget of more than $3bn to create technology for use by the US military. After all, the organisation, has helped fund technological breakthroughs such as the internet and unmanned aerial vehicles in its different incarnations over the years.But despite the whimsical nature of the task, Darpa officials say they are not running the challenge for fun.According to the event's organisers, the challenge is an attempt to find out more about how large-scale problems can be solved by using the net and social networks to enhance "timely communication, wide-area team building and urgent mobilisation".The idea is that through observing how the various groups attempting the task fare, the organisation will learn a significant amount about the way computer systems and popular websites can be used to harness collective intelligence."We are not interested in the balloons - we already know where those are," said the group's deputy director, Norman Whitaker. "It's the techniques people use to solve the challenge we're focused on."It is not the first time Darpa has taken an offbeat approach to its research for the Pentagon. In recent years, the agency has run a number of other competitions open to the public, including a series of races pitting computer-controlled driverless cars against each other.The latest challenge has already attracted a wide spread of interest from academics and computer scientists, as well as from some more unexpected quarters. Record-breaking balloon artist Larry Moss has said that he will also be attempting to locate the targets. Moss, who is based in Rochester, New York, says that if he wins the top prize, he will spend his winnings making a special tribute balloon in the shape of a giant flying cupcake."It's a logical extension of my plans," he said.InternetResearch and developmentComputingSocial networkingUnited StatesFacebookTwitterMySpaceCrowdsourcingBobbie Johnsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Forensic market Is a free market in forensic science dangerous? news.bbc.co.uk |
Stocks fluctuate as dollar strengthens NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks fluctuated Wednesday as good news on manufacturing helped offset a decline in commodities prices.... hosted.ap.org |
Aliens visiting Earth will be just like humans, scientist claims Extra-terrestrials likely to possess human foibles such as greed, violence and a tendency to exploit others' resources, conference to be toldGovernments should prepare for the worst if aliens visit Earth because beings from outer space are likely to be just like humans, a leading scientist is claiming.Extra-terrestrials might not only Âresemble us but have our foibles, such as greed, violence and a tendency to exploit others' resources, says Simon ÂConway Morris, professor of evolutionary Âpaleobiology at Cambridge University.And while aliens could come in peace they are quite as likely to be searching for somewhere to live, and to help themselves to water, minerals and fuel, Conway Morris will tell a conference at the Royal Society in London tomorrow.His lecture is part of a two-day conference at which experts will discuss how we might detect life on distant planets and what that could mean for society. "Extra-terrestrials … won't be splodges of glue … they could be disturbingly like us, and that might not be a good thing – we don't have a great record."The US space agency's search for alien life is based upon the mantra "follow the water", a strategy reflecting the fact that, on Earth, where there's water there's life. Recent missions have Ârevealed ice on the moon and Mars.Astronomers have detected more than 400 planets outside our solar system, some of which sit in the Â"Goldilocks zone" where the temperature is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to form.Conway Morris will argue that alien life is most likely to occur on a planet similar to our own, with organisms made from the same biochemicals. The process of evolution will even shape alien life in a similar way, he added."My view is that Darwinian evolution is really quite predictable, and when you have a biosphere and evolution takes over, then common themes emerge and the same is true for intelligence."If you have a planet much smaller than ours, the gravity is so weak it loses its atmosphere. If the planet is much bigger, its gravity is so strong that everything crawls around on the ground, because you don't have to fall far to break everything. It's fantastically dull."The meeting is the first in a series that marks the Royal Society's 350th anniversary. Future conferences will tackle the science of ageing, vaccines, stem cells and geoengineering: the use of technology to protect the planet from the adverse effects of climate change.Albert Harrison, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, who is speaking at the meeting tomorrow, will raise concerns about the radio signals humans are sending out to any eavesdropping aliens.Scientists have used telescopes to listen for alien broadcasts for more than 20 years, but we have also beamed our own signals into space. Harrison wonders if we might be sending the wrong kind of messages. "Some of them are serious, but there's a lot of hoopla, like love letters and commercials. What would we make of an alien civilisation if the first thing we translated from them was a commercial for a snack food?" he said. In the spring, scientists will debate whether Earth should be more proactive in trying to make contact with aliens by broadcasting signals to solar systems that might harbour life.Some enthusiasts believe any alien civilisation capable of reaching us can only have survived long enough to develop the necessary technology by solving major social problems, such as war, poverty and discrimination. Harrison disagrees."I do think there's a risk in active searches for extra-terrestrials. The attitude seems to be they're friendly, they're a long way away, and they can't get here. But if you wake up one morning and an armada of extra-terrestrial spaceships are circling Earth, that prediction won't necessarily hold," Harrison said.If life has evolved elsewhere in our cosmic neighbourhood, we should find out by detecting their waste gases in the atmosphere of their planet or by discovering remnants of extra-terrestrial microbes in meteorites or alien soil samples, he said.Harrison dismisses fears of public panic if alien life is discovered, of the kind which reportedly followed Orson Welles' infamous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds in 1938. "The public reaction was overstated. Most people who thought the broadcast was real took sensible actions to protect themselves," Harrison said. "Surveys suggest most people think they will be fine, but they worry about others freaking out."Ted Peters, professor of systematic theology at the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in California, has surveyed religious groups to understand whether confirmation of extra-terrestrials could trigger the collapse of religion on Earth. His research suggests not, but he believes Christians should clarify whether God's creation covers the whole of space or just Earth.SpaceIan Sampleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |