"

A digital picture of a spectacular and apparently explosive event in the sky fooled a pair of seasoned NASA scientists, has other researchers around the globe mystified, and made a minor celebrity of a teenage photographer.

Jonathan Burnett, 15, was photographing his friends skateboarding in Pencoed, Wales when one of them noticed a colorful fireball in the sky. Burnett snapped a picture, then sent it to NASA scientists and asked if they knew what it was.

Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell, who run NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), posted the photograph on Oct. 1 and wrote that "a sofa-sized rock came hurtling into the nearby atmosphere of planet Earth and disintegrated." They called the picture "one of the more spectacular meteor images yet recorded."
Images

The Picture: Jonathan Burnett's photograph, which has scientists baffled.

A photo taken from about 10 miles away, by Julian Heywood, confirmed that Burnett's photo was legitimate and helped scientists decide the event had something to do with a jet contrail

Problem is, it turns out, there was no meteor."

Photo of Fiery Object Mystifies Scientists

Decius wrote:
]This is probably the scariest Microsoft related footage that I have ]ever seen. Its called Dance Monkey Boy.

Holy shit... Its like a cross between the Star Wars Kid and Hitler.

Steve Ballmer: When marketing goes too far... [MPG]

inigoct wrote:
] Seoul, South Korea - Kim Won-jung walked up to a vending
] machine and bought an orange drink. But rather than
] insert coins, she paid with the press of a cellphone
] button.

]given how the US lags behind most everyone in cell phone tech, how ]long 'til we can do this here?

I wonder if they'll eventually be able to receive payment too. People would be able to play lasertag with cash.

IOL : Do you accept cellphone payments?

] Nano-velcro could hold objects together as tightly as a strong
] adhesive, say US researchers.

The real question is, would the inventor of velcro make a few more billions by exercising patent rights? (read as: half joking)

Nano-velcro binds faster than strongest glues: Super-strong adhesive planned with hooked carbon strands.

"The new system requires no special footage and relies on intelligent computer analysis of scenes to provide the information needed for 3D images."

Technology brings 3D TV closer

" HOUSTON, Oct. 20, 2003 -- Chemists at Rice University have demonstrated that disordered assemblies of gold nanowires and conductive organic molecules can function as non-volatile memory, one of the key components of computer chips.

"A large part of the cost associated with creating integrated circuits comes from the painstaking precision required to ensure that each of the millions of circuits on the chip are placed in exactly the right spot," said lead researcher Jim Tour, an organic chemist at Rice. "Our research shows that ordered precision isn't a prerequisite for computing. It is possible to make memory circuits out of disordered systems." "

Self-assembled nanocells function as non-volatile memory

"Bacteria could scrub uranium from sites contaminated decades ago. Uranium-contaminated groundwater can be cleaned up by resident microbes, say microbiologists1.

Cold War-era uranium processing has left contaminated sites across the United States and the world. Traditional pump-and-treat methods can take decades and expose workers to toxic levels of uranium. Now a better solution is being proposed by Robert Anderson, of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and his colleagues.
"

Bugs boost Cold War clean-up

" Dyslexics who have trouble reading words online and in print may soon find relief in a new typeface being developed by a Dutch designer.

Unlike traditional typefaces, which reuse the same forms for multiple letters -- such as b and d, or p and q -- the Read Regular typeface makes each letter significantly unique so that dyslexics can more easily distinguish one character from another. Additionally, Read Regular features simplified forms and extended openings in letters like c and e. "

New Typeface to Help Dyslexics

I just got this link from Virgil Griffith.

This webpage will redirect you to a Google image search using a random search term based on the filename scheme used by many popular digital cameras. What results is the most random, random sampling of pictures.

The Google random picture generator

"By the time he was 45, cardiologist Mark Keating had reached the pinnacle of a doctor's career. He was preparing to move from his prestigious post as an investigator at the University of Utah to an even more exalted position as a professor at Harvard. He'd just won three important prizes for his comprehensive work on the genetics of heart arrhythmias. He seemed destined for even more glory in the field of cardiac genetics.

But oddly, Keating couldn't keep his mind off newts. He was particularly obsessed with an obscure species native to East Coast forests: a bandy-legged amphibian with a flat tail, blunt head, and vivid crimson dots. Red-spotted newts are endangered, but that wasn't what lured Keating away from his heart patients. Rather, newts' famous ability to heal themselves fascinated him - they can produce a new eye or sprout a leg if one is amputated, even reconnect a severed spinal cord. "

Regrow Your Own Broken heart? No problem. New liver? Coming right up. The road to regeneration starts here.