Posts tagged government

The same lab that first reported the shocking results last September, which could have upended much of modern physics, has now reported that the subatomic particles called neutrinos “respect the cosmic speed limit.”
Physicist Sergio Bertolucci, research director at Switzerland’s CERN physics lab, presented the results Friday at the 25th International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics in Kyoto, Japan.
“Although this result isn’t as exciting as some would have liked, it is what we all expected deep down,” Bertolucci said in a statement. ast year, OPERA measured that neutrinos were making the 454-mile (730-kilometer) underground trip between the two labs more speedily than light, arriving there 60 nanoseconds earlier than a beam of light would.
At the time, the physicists were stunned because such a result seemed to break Einstein’s prediction that nothing could travel faster than light. This idea is at the heart of his theory of special relativity, on which much of our modern technology and scientific understanding is based.

The OPERA researchers weren’t sure what could explain their anomalous results, having checked and rechecked their work, so they released their findings to the larger community of physicists in hopes that experts around the world could help them figure it out.
“The story captured the public imagination, and has given people the opportunity to see the scientific method in action an unexpected result was put up for scrutiny, thoroughly investigated and resolved in part thanks to collaboration between normally competing experiments,” Bertolucci said. “That’s how science moves forward.”

(Source: futurenow321)

Wu Zhongyuan, 22, a local farmer, sits in his self-made helicopter, in Jiuxian county, Henan province August 1, 2009. The local government, out of safety concerns, later halted Wu’s plan to fly the helicopter. The aircraft took Wu two months to build and cost more than 10,000 yuan ($1,460).

(Source: futurenow321)

No, it’s not the plot of some ridiculous new low-budget action movie: the House Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces panel has asked the Missile Defense Agency to figure out how much it’ll cost to unscrap the Airborne Laser Testbed and put it into action against the North Korean ballistic missile threat

While we’re all for the funding and deployment of gigantic long-range superpowered chemical battle lasers mounted on 747s, the slightly surreal part about all this is that the damn thing doesn’t really work all that well, and neither do North Korea’s ballistic missiles.

We’d absolutely love to be able to say that the ABL is deserving of another few billion dollars, and maybe it is when considered as just a research project, but it’s a long way from being ready for operational deployment. The ABL has a relatively short range, is not very good at dealing with bad weather and has a history of mechanical and electrical issues. What’s more, it only carries enough toxic chemicals for about a dozen shots, and (perhaps most relevantly) a laser plane costs about $1.5 billion plus $100,000 per hour to keep in the air.

(Source: futurenow321)

Regulators are proposing that food companies that want to use tiny engineered particles in their packaging may have to provide extra testing data to show the products are safe.

The Food and Drug Administration issued tentative guidelines Friday for food and cosmetic companies interested in using nanoparticles, which are measured in billionths of a meter. Nanoscale materials are generally less than 100 nanometers in diameter. A sheet of paper, in comparison, is 100,000 nanometers thick. A human hair is 80,000 nanometers thick.

The submicroscopic particles are increasingly showing up in FDA-regulated products like sunscreens, skin lotions and glare-reducing eyeglass coatings. Some scientists believe the technology will one day be used in medicine, but the FDA announcement did not address that use.

The draft guidance suggests the FDA may require food companies to provide data establishing the safety of any packaging using nanotechnology.

Under longstanding regulations, companies aren’t required to seek regulatory approval before launching products containing established ingredients and materials, such as caffeine, spices and various preservatives.

But FDA officials said Friday that foods and packaging containing nanoparticles may require more scrutiny.

“At this point, in terms of the science, we think it’s likely the exemption does not apply and we would encourage folks to come in and talk to us,” said Dennis Keefe, director of FDA’s office of food additive safety.

Keefe said companies are studying whether nanoparticles can reduce the risk of bacterial contamination in certain foods. He said the agency is aware of just one food package currently on the market that uses nanoparticles but did not identify it. He said more are expected in coming years.

(Source: futurenow321)

If you fear the robot apocalypse, perhaps your day would be much improved if you just moved on. Boston Dynamics’ PETMAN robot, developed for DARPA, is getting more humanoid-like by the day it seems, and here we see it—legs, torso, arms, and all—negotiating staircases, running on a treadmill, and even hitting the floor for some pushups. All this strength training appears to be doing PETMAN some good.

(Source: futurenow321)

This is the first time that Boeing will be offering a mobile phone designed for use on cellular networks. The project is already near the end of its development cycle, suggesting that the device may be a fork of Android 2.3 Gingerbread and not of the latest iteration. Similarly encrypted devices currently cost $15,000 to $20,000 per unit and use proprietary software and hardware.

The Boeing Phone, however, wants to drive down that price point, but not necessarily to mass market pricing. The company also finds that its target users may want top security, but they also want access to popular apps. The Android-based Boeing Phone will give users an interface they’re familiar with in the consumer market, while providing them a whole other level of security.

(Source: futurenow321)

The development means Romney is now the certain GOP nominee to take on President Barack Obama in November, as Santorum was his main challenger. While Romney still needs to win several hundred delegates to clinch the nomination, Santorum’s departure from the race leaves his path unhindered.

(Source: futurenow321)

The ruling said that its no longer allowed to give healthy cows antibiotics for the fear that it could create dangerous bacteria. A federal judge has ordered the Food and Drug Administration to take action on its own 35 year old rule that would stop farmers from putting antibiotics into animal feed, a practice that have led to a surge in dangerous, drug resistant bacteria. in a ruling handed down Thursday, Judge Theodore Katz said the FDA must begin steps to withdraw approval of the two antibiotics for routine use in animals, siding with four consumer safety groups that brought a lawsuit against the agency. Antibiotics were one the most key medical discoveries of the last century, used to heal everything from infected wounds to strep throat. Since their commercial introduction in the 1930s, antibiotics have become a ubiquitous part of medical practice. Most medical experts agree over prescribing of the drugs has played a role in bacteria’s growing resistance to them.

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