Robot Wars For Real

Robots are being let loose in a colony of machines in an attempt to find out whether they can learn from their experiences. The scientists behind this unusual experiment describe it as an evolutionary arms race for robots, with the machines struggling to collect energy.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1801000/1801985.stm

Hiding Behind the User

There is another factor that drives the usability movement: the cult of the user. Users are all things to all people in the world of usability - they can be customers who will take their customer loyalty to another website with one mouse click, individuals suffering at the hands of big businesses that refuse to display their prices clearly on their websites, or less able people suffering from everything from visual impairment to ignorance of basic browser functionality. Users provide an excellent means of winning an argument when participating in a web design discussion - the slightest suggestion that you have not got the users needs foremost in your mind can trump your case. Steve Krugs book Dont Make Me Think exemplifies the diminished view of the user, who is characterised in the book as being an impatient, harassed imbecile unable to cope with the slightest cognitive stress. The book is full of passages such as: [the user] should be able to "get it" - what it is and how to use it - without expending any effort thinking about it (7). This is fair enough, from a web design perspective, except when it is used to justify reducing interface design to the lowest common denominator. Unfortunately much of the usability literature, including Krugs book, capitalises on a highly conservative view of how technology can be taken forward. The widespread adoption of the arguments of Krug and Nielsen must be seen in this context.
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D3DE.htm

Meat is Good: the Paleo - Diet

"Over the past several decades, numerous studies have found that indigenous populations have low serum cholesterol and triglyceride levels," Cordain says. This comes in spite of the fact that many modern nutritionists would likely not approve their diets. "Previous studies by myself and colleagues had found that nearly all - 97 percent - of the worlds hunter-gatherer societies would have exceeded recommended guidelines for fat," Cordain says. Watkins says that even though this may be surprising to many people, it fits exactly with what research is showing about the importance of specific types of fat in the diet. "Current research is showing that, with the decline of fat in the diet, the amount of fat isnt as important as the relative amounts, or ratio, of specific fats in your diet. Its a qualitative issue, not a quantitative issue," he says.
http://www.cosmiverse.com/science02050203.html

Phillips Fighting Copy Protected CDs

"Those are silver discs with music data that resemble CDs, but arent," Philips representative Klaus Petri told Financial Times Deutschland. Gerry Wirtz, general manager of the Philips copyright office that administers the CD logo, told Reuters that not only would Philips yank the logo from copy-protected discs, it would force the major labels to add warning stickers for consumers. Most controversially, he claimed future models of Philips players would both read and burn the copy-protected discs. Thats no small threat, given the popularity of Philips current $399 twin-tray CD-ROM recorder, sold on Amazon under the slogan "CD Burning: Simpler than Ever." Both Philips and the big five record labels have declined to comment further on the matter, but independent label owners and industry veterans say the silence means neither side plans to shift course away from their inevitable collision.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50101,00.html

Scientists raise odds of life on Mars

The odds of life on Mars are better after the discovery by Toronto researchers of microbes that manage to thrive under harsh Mars-like conditions in Antarctic soils.The surprise discovery, done on a shoestring budget, is expected to spur more microbe-hunting expeditions to Antarctic regions most like the frozen and dry parts of Mars, the nearest planetary neighbour to Earth.Scientists said the discovery should also help pinpoint the best landing site for a robotic space explorer tentatively scheduled to seek answers by digging into the Mars surface before the end of the decade.
http://www.thestar.com//NASApp/cs/ContentServer?GXHC_gx_session_id_=8a1db174e08e9266&pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1012345854936&call_page=TS_News&call_pageid=968332188492&call_pagepath=News/News&col=96879

Intact Pterosaur Fossil with Long Feather Discovered in China

After the discovery of feathered dinosaur fossil Chinese paleontologists have lately found feathered pterosaur fossil in Inner Mongolia.The discovery shed lights on many academic disputes as on how the patagium is attached with the body, whether pterosaur has tail patagium,and whether pterosaurs have feather and warm blood.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200201/29/eng20020129_89638.shtml

1st Step in Creating a Casimir Engine

Last week, Mohideen and his team announced they had measured this lateral force. They placed two corrugated gold plates a few hundred nanometers apart with their peaks and troughs aligned. When they moved the plates slightly out of alignment, they detected a force of a few piconewtons that pushed them back into position. At this point, you dont get out any more energy than you put in, but its the first time that virtual particles have been cajoled into doing work in this way. The researchers are now trying to generate other effects, such as a repulsive force and a "dynamic Casimir effect" that moves plates back and forth. The teams measurements could also pick up signs of other as yet undiscovered fundamental forces, as well as evidence of extra spatial dimensions that some theorists predict are "curled up" on a tiny scale. "We should be able to place limits on the size of these effects," says Mohideen.
http://www.cosmiverse.com/space01310203.html