Industry standards and innovation took center stage at MIX10, as Microsoft Corp. made a series of announcements that underscore the company’s commitment to interoperability and performance on the Web. Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer at Microsoft, unveiled the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview including expanded support for HTML5, hardware-accelerated graphics and text, and a new JavaScript engine. Together these allow developers to use the same markup and deliver graphically and functionally rich Web applications that take advantage of modern PC hardware through a modern operating system.

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In 1983, a Columbia University undergraduate named Barack Obama wrote an article, “Breaking the War Mentality,” for the school publication Sundial. Obama expressed the hope that someday humanity would abolish nuclear weapons and create a “nuclear free world.” Obama never abandoned that dream. The Nobel Foundation awarded him its Peace Prize last December in large part because of his “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.” [More]

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First Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson warned in September 2009 that reform of chemical regulations was coming and that bisphenol A, or BPA–a building block of many plastics–was among those that might be due for enhanced scrutiny. Then the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it had concerns about BPA and would conduct further testing of its safety in January. Now the EPA has made it official by designating BPA as a "chemical of concern" for its human health and environmental impacts. [More]

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Microsoft Corp. today brightens your video calls with TrueColor Technology, a groundbreaking new image processing technology that provides superior color and brightness in even the worst lighting conditions. TrueColor Technology automatically adjusts the picture quality to provide a more colorful video whether out on the porch with bright sunshine in the morning or in the living room with low light in the evening. This technology will be available in three new webcams launching today, the LifeCam HD-5000, LifeCam HD-5001 and LifeCam HD-6000 for Notebooks. These LifeCams will also feature 720p HD sensors and Auto Focus technology at a value price. In addition, TrueColor will be available with the recently launched LifeCam Cinema through a software update.

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Microsoft Corp. today announced new investments around desktop virtualization technologies and solutions, including virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), to help organizations of all sizes increase flexibility, employee productivity and IT cost savings. During a webcast at 9 a.m. PDT, the company will detail new technologies, simplified licensing models and an alliance with Citrix Systems Inc., furthering its virtualization strategy from the desktop to the datacenter.

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Only 8 percent of respondents believe their utility has a technology architecture that is adequate to support new business processes and new technologies. To fund all of these investments, 77 percent of respondents expect their budgets for smart grid technologies to increase over the next two to three years.

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DISH, Tex.–A satellite broadcasting company bought the rights to rename this town a few years ago in exchange for a decade of free television, but it is another industry that dominates the 200 or so residents: natural gas. Five facilities perched on the north Texas town ‘s outskirts compress the gas newly flowing to the surface from the cracked Barnett Shale more than two kilometers beneath the surface, collectively contributing a brew of toxic chemicals to the air. [More]

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The Great Exhibition of 2010 was held at London’s La Scala nightclub,
with over a thousand costumed attendees. Have a look at the
BBC video which won’t embed – lots of the stuff we are familiar
with through such luminaries as gmjhowe, but other, less traditional
imagery as well, especially in som…
By: Kiteman

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No turtle protections, no shrimp. That’s the word from the U.S. Department of State, which ruled on Thursday to ban imports of wild-caught Mexican shrimp if they are collected in ways that threaten endangered sea turtles . The ban does not include aquacultural shrimp or those caught in shallow waters. [More]

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SAN FRANCISCO – The green economy continues to show almost remarkable signs of vitality, business leaders say, despite the near-total collapse of global talks, stalemate in Washington, D.C., and polls showing decreased urgency to tackle climate change. [More]

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High speed rail in the United States is off to a clumsy start. After the Obama administration announced it would be dolling out billions of dollars to high speed rail projects around the country, states started putting together project proposals and the like to get their cut of the funding. Then the numbers came in; California would get a lion’s share of the money, followed by the MidWest, Florida, Texas, and the Northeast.

Unfortunately it looks like the most “shovel ready” of the HSR projects, the proposed line between Tampa and Orlando, is already running into problems. For one, it wouldn’t make the commute between the two cities all that much shorter… so why bother?

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There are lots of ways our government is trying to gently nudge (or coerce) automakers into making more fuel efficient cars. There are of course the upgraded CAFE standards, which demand a fleet-wide fuel economy average for cars of 35.5 mpg by 2016. The Feds have also given out billions in low-interest loans to electric car makers and alt-fuel startups. But what about a tax?

As it turns out, the Peoples Republic of China already imposes a tax on engines with more than 2.0 liters of displacement, and Washington state has also considered just such an idea. But is it a good one?

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A new study by the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies at Rochester Institute of Technology indicates that the use of E20 fuel, which blends 20 percent ethanol with gasoline, reduces the tail pipe emissions of hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide, compared with traditional gasoline or E10 blends. In addition, the research team found no measurable impact to vehicle drivability or maintenance in conventional internal combustion engines.

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SALT LAKE CITY, March 29, 2010 – A new study from University of Utah psychologists found a small group of people with an extraordinary ability to multitask: Unlike 97.5 percent of those studied, they can safely drive while chatting on a cell phone.

These individuals – described by the researchers as “supertaskers” – constitute only 2.5 percent of the population. They are so named for their ability to successfully do two things at once: in this case, talk on a cell phone while operating a driving simulator without noticeable impairment.

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Using genetic sleight of hand, researcher Xinyao Liu and professor Roy Curtiss at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute have coaxed photosynthetic microbes to secrete oil—bypassing energy and cost barriers that have hampered green biofuel production. Their results appear in this week’s advanced online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or PNAS.

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Imagine if your computer only allowed you to see one line at a time, no matter what you were doing – reading e-mail, looking at a Web site, doing research. That’s the challenge facing blind computer users today. But new research from North Carolina State University is moving us closer to the development of a display system that would allow the blind to take full advantage of the Web and other computer applications.

“Right now, electronic Braille displays typically only show one line of text at a time. And they’re very expensive,” says Dr. Neil Di Spigna, a research assistant professor at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the research. In order to develop a more functional, and affordable, tool that would allow the blind to interface with their computers, Di Spigna and his colleagues are working to develop a full-page, refreshable Braille display. Braille uses a series of raised dots to represent letters and numbers, allowing blind people to read.

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