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POPSYour cell phone is a "roving bug" According to this report, the FBI can activate a remote tracking and listening device built into every recently-made cell phone without having to modify or handle the phone physically. The only way to defeat the bug is to remove the phone's battery.
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POPSScientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol “Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we’ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011,” says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.
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POPSThinking ahead: Bacteria anticipate coming changes in their environment To test this idea, the researchers exposed a population of E. coli to different temperatures and oxygen changes, and measured the gene responses in each case. The results were striking: An increase in temperature had nearly the same effect on the bacterium's genes as a decrease in oxygen level. Indeed, upon transition to a higher temperature, many of the genes essential for aerobic respiration were practically turned off. To prove that this is not just genetic coincidence, the researchers then grew the bacteria in a biologically flipped environment where oxygen levels rose following an increase in temperature. Remarkably, within a few hundred generations the bugs partially adapted to this new regime, and no longer turned off the genes for aerobic respiration when the temperature rose.
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POPSDublin Zoo: Nature's Way is Best Way I was reminded of this while visiting last week. I'm a member and had been informed of this in our newsletter. In the brand new extensive Zoo area, two new caves have been born. I love visiting my relatives with my grandchild.
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POPSFirefox 3 has arrived A must for heavy web users :) * Note that this is a release "candidate", meaning it's not fully official yet (but haven't we waited long enough? ;)).
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POPSWaste water plus bacteria make hydrogen Hydrogen at the moment, is generally produced from Hydrocarbons and can also produce greenhouse gases. The Bacteria produce hydrogen from vinegar in a way that is environmentally friendly,and is a method of using renewable organic material, It uses 10% of the energy that is used in Hydrolysis, where hydrogen is produced only using an electric current
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POPSGoodbye To Faulty Software? The program that performs the computation is equivalent to the proof of the theorem. By proving the theorem the program is guaranteed to be correct. It is not that simple, of course, but so promising is type theory that since 1989 the EU has been funding a string of projects to develop it under the Future and Emerging Technologies programme. That style of working is going to change so that we spend more effort on actually writing programs than testing them.
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POPSThe Feral Child She weighed 46 pounds. She was malnourished and anemic. In the pediatric intensive care unit they tried to feed the girl, but she couldn't chew or swallow solid food. So they put her on an IV and let her drink from a bottle. Aides bathed her, scrubbed the sores on her face, trimmed her torn fingernails. They had to cut her tangled hair before they could comb out the lice. Her caseworker determined that she had never been to school, never seen a doctor. She didn't know how to hold a doll, didn't understand peek-a-boo. "Due to the severe neglect," a doctor would write, "the child will be disabled for the rest of her life." Hunched in an over sized crib, Danielle curled in on herself like a potato bug, then writhed angrily, kicking and thrashing. To calm herself, she batted at her toes and sucked her fists. "Like an infant," one doctor wrote.