Articles:

• Ball Physics: The science behind the swerve
• 100,000 years old: Tooth gives up oldest human DNA
• 06/06/06: The Nick of time , 666 day inspires demonic releases

Clips:

• Multi-Touch Interaction Research 
• Intro to Mackbook Pro
• Just for fun

Others:

• The Press Photographer's Year 2006
• Mango How To
• Download Firefox extensions 

"When driving on the motorway, have you ever wondered about (and cursed) the fact that cars in the other lane seem to be getting ahead faster than you?"

Yah and here is the reason why is it so: Check it out

Today i got an email from a friend about this twins. Whats very surprising about them as you can see in the pic below, is that the two little girls are different coloured – one white and the other black!

A mixed-race British mom has given birth to twins – one of each. No, not a boy and a girl, two girls – one black, the other white. The odds of such a birth are about a million to one, experts said. "It was a shock when I realized that my twins were two different colors," Kylie Hodgson, 19, told London's Daily Mail. "But it doesn't matter to us – they are just our two gorgeous little girls." Hodgson and her partner, Remi Horder, 17, were both born to mixed-race parents. Little Kian and Remee share a love of apples and the Teletubbies, their proud mom says. Fertility experts speculate that a sperm containing all-white genes fused with an egg with all-white genes, and a sperm with all-black genes fused with an all-black gene egg to produce the fraternal twins.

The first computer circuit to be built on a single molecule has been unveiled by researchers in the US. It was assembled on a single carbon nanotube, a standard component of any nanotechnologist’s toolkit.

The circuit is less than a fifth of the width of a human hair and can only be seen through an electron microscope.

The researchers, from IBM and two US universities in Florida and New York, told the journal Science that the work could lead to faster computer chips.   [ Read More ]

Scientists have developed artificial, super-strength muscles which are powered by alcohol and hydrogen.

“The muscle consumes oxygen and fuel that can be transported via a circulation system; the muscle itself supports the chemical reaction that leads to mechanical work; electrochemical circuits can act as nerves, controlling actuation; some energy is stored locally in the muscle itself; and, like natural muscle, the materials studied contract linearly.”

Read More: BBC News

I got an email about this chemical compound a few months ago, checked my junk mail folder and I found it. I even located the originating source which is this website.

As you all know, not all people are familiar with chemical terms, these terms if used incorrectly can prove to be misleading so it is important to study the formula if it bears the right formatting.

The email presented me the dangers of the compound citing numerous examples and scenarios but hey, I’m too smart to be mislead by this. Just for the fun of it, check out the facts about Dihydrogen Monoxide and be scared about it.

If you can’t figure out what it is, click here.

All credits goes to: Poldo

They had cracked the first of the three German WWII cipher last month. I had written about it and it worths reading for an introduction about these group of amateurs code crackers involved in an online project called “Project M4″. [ Read about it here ]

Well now they have cracked the second one.

The cipher was..

“TMKF NWZX FFII YXUT IHWM DHXI FZEQ VKDV MQSW BQND YOZF TIWM JHXH YRPA CZUG RREM VPAN WXGT KTHN RLVH KZPG MNMV SECV CKHO INPL HHPV PXKM BHOK CCPD PEVX VVHO ZZQB IYIE OUSE ZNHJ KWHY DAGT XDJD JKJP KCSD SUZT QCXJ DVLP AMGQ KKSH PHVK SVPC BUWZ FIZP FUUP”

and the solution is…

Found nothing on convoy’s course 55°, [I am] moving to the ordered [naval] square. Position naval square AJ 3995. [wind] south-east [force] 4, sea [state] 3, 10/10 cloudy, [barometer] [10]28 mb [and] rising, fog, visibility 1 nautical mile

Only the third cipher remains unsolved so far and it is something like this.

“HCEY ZTCS OPUP PZDI UQRD LWXX FACT TJMB HDVC JJMM ZRPY IKHZ AWGL YXWT MJPQ UEFS ZBCT VRLA LZXW VXTS LFFF AUDQ FBWR RYAP SBOW JMKL DUYU PFUQ DOWV HAHC DWAU ARSW TXCF VOYF PUFH VZFD GGPO OVGR MBPX XZCA NKMO NFHX PCKH JZBU MXJW XKAU OD?Z UCVC XPFT”

soon this will also get cracked.

The Tesseract (or HyperCube) is mathematical prediction of what cube might look like in 4D Space. An old story tells us how to keep our money safe from robber that exists only in two dimensions (sheet of paper): simply just put it in square safe. 2D robber won’t be able to reach it… but if another 3D cruck wanted the gold, he would simply take the gold out of the sqaure not even touching the safe walls. On the other hand, to keep gold out of reach from 3D robber you would need a cube safebox with walls on all 6 sides…now the gold is secure.. but imagine another robber bursting from 4th dimesnion just to steal our gold! He would be able to take the gold from inside the box safe bypassing all the walls, simply taking the gold from inside. In this situation hypecube safebox would become usefull, if we had one… Hardly imaginable, but here are few explanations how to understand 4D cube mathematics, or simply view or rotate your own Hypercube or other 4d structures.

Scientists just announced the discovery of this strange new crustacean 900 miles south of Easter Island. According to a report in the journal of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, divers first found the creature last year at a depth of 7,540 feet. From the Associated Press:

Scientists said the animal, which they named Kiwa hirsuta, was so distinct from other species that they created a new family and genus for it. The animal is white and just shy of 6 inches long — about the size of a salad plate.

In what (the French Institute for Sea Exploration’s Michel) Segonzac described as a “surprising characteristic,” the animal’s pincers are covered with sinuous, hair-like strands.

It is also blind. The researchers found it had only “the vestige of a membrane” in place of eyes, Segonzac said.

Links

Ron Patrick wanted a VW Beetle with a jet engine (hey, who doesn’t?). But he also wanted to be able to drive it on the open road, rather than just on a closed airport runway surrounded by fire engines and EMT crews. His solution? A dual-engine vehicle, with a normal VW motor for day-to-day transportation, and a GE T58-8F helicopter turboshaft engine converted to run as a jet, to get through rush-hour traffic. All we know is we don’t want to be caught behind Patrick when he flips the switch on this one. That, and how much will he charge to add this little trick to our ride?

Source: Engadget

• runs a “variant” of Windows XP (and can run other x86-compatible operating systems)
• 7-inch screen
• Price? “Under a $1,000.”

See Also:
Origami Update
Microsoft Alexandria? Origami?
Origami Project (Official Site)

Click on the below picture of origami (not confirmed) and you will notice an icon labelled “Alexandria” on the top right of the device’s desktop, also on the right side of the current window title bar.

Is it another secretive Microsoft product or something related to Windows Media Video subscription system used in Vongo?

See also: Origami Update

Features of the Mr.Gadget 1GB USB 2.0 Executive Watch (Limited Edition):
- 1GB Data Capacity
- Ultra fast USB 2.0 data transfer rate, USB 1.0 compatible
- Stainless Steel construction
- Japanese Citizen Precision Movement
- USB cable included
- Plug and Play with most Windows and MAC operating systems
- 5 year warranty

System requirements of the Mr.Gadget 1GB USB 2.0 Executive Watch:
- IBM compatible Desk PC, Notebook PC, Mac
- USB port: Support USB version 1.1 or 2.0
- Hard Disk Free Space: approximately 10MB
- OS Support: Win 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP, Mac OS

Want to Buy? Go to Mr.Gadget

or try Amazon.com:
Hot Watch Deals

Samsung will launch a Windows Mobile cell-phone that packs an 8G-byte hard-disk drive, hitting European markets in the second half of 2006, the company has said.

The SGH-i310 is a candy-bar form factor handset that looks similar to the i300 hard-disk drive phone launched by Samsung last year.

That phone was centred around mobile music and the new handset also includes a music player in addition to dual speakers, an amplifier and Bluetooth stereo link. The music player supports the MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, WAV and Ogg music file formats.

Other features include a 2-megapixel digital camera, Bluetooth printing and a video output connector. [ Read More ]

Try this test to find out: Cognitivelabs

Gaining root access to a Mac is “easy pickings,” according to an individual who won an OS X hacking challenge last month by gaining root control of a machine using an unpublished security vulnerability.

On Feb. 22, the Sweden-based Mac enthusiast set up his Mac Mini as a server and invited hackers to break through the computer’s security and gain root control, which would allow the attacker to take charge of the computer and delete files and folders or install applications.

Participants were given local client access to the target computer and invited to try their luck.

Within hours of going live, the “rm-my-mac” competition was over. The challenger posted this message on his Web site: “This sucks. Six hours later, this poor little Mac was owned, and this page got defaced.”

The hacker who won the challenge, who asked ZDNet Australia to identify him only as “Gwerdna,” said he gained root control of the Mac in less than 30 minutes. [ Read More ]

I was astonished to read about Tammet. He can recite the number Pi to its 22514th digit !.
Below is an article about him and his abilities from Wikipedia.

Daniel Paul Tammet (born January 31, 1979) is a British autistic gifted with a facility for mathematics problems, sequence memory, and natural language learning.

He was born with congenital childhood epilepsy. His autism was a result of a series of seizures as a young child.

Experiencing numbers as colors or sensations is a well-documented form of synaesthesia, but Tammet is unique in how specific his mental imagery of numbers is: he claims that in his mind each number up to 10,000 has its own unique shape and feel, and he can “sense” whether a number is prime or divisible, and “see” results of calculations as landscapes in his head.

Tammet holds the European record for remembering and recounting pi, recounting it in a several-hour session to its 22514th digit. [1]

Professor Allan Snyder at the Australian National University said of Tammet: “Savants can’t usually tell us how they do what they do. It just comes to them. Daniel can. He describes what he sees in his head. That’s why he’s exciting. He could be the Rosetta Stone.” He can speak at least English, French, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Icelandic, and Esperanto. He likes Estonian very much because it is so special and rich in vowels. He has even changed his second name to Estonian-based word Tammet, which comes from the Estonian word Tamm meaning oak. Tammet is making a new language called mänti. Mänti has many features related to Finnish and Estonian.

He was the subject of a documentary in the UK titled The Boy With The Amazing Brain that was broadcast on Five on May 24, 2005 (also broadcast under the title “Brain Man”). It showed highlights of his feat of recalling pi as well as his meeting with Kim Peek, another individual who is famous for having savant skills. In one emotional moment of the show, Peek hugged Tammet and told him “some day you may be as brilliant as me.”

Tammet claims he can learn a new language within a week. For the documentary film about him, Tammet was challenged to learn Icelandic. Within seven days he was conversing well enough in Icelandic to undergo a live television interview about his skills, and chat freely with the hosts. He is a keen and improving golfer. [Read More]

There is a small bottle containing a red fluid on a shelf in Sheffield University’s microbiology laboratory. The liquid looks cloudy and uninteresting. Yet, if one group of scientists is correct, the phial contains the first samples of extraterrestrial life isolated by researchers.Inside the bottle are samples left over from one of the strangest incidents in recent meteorological history. On 25 July, 2001, blood-red rain fell over the Kerala district of western India. And these rain bursts continued for the next two months. All along the coast it rained crimson, turning local people’s clothes pink, burning leaves on trees and falling as scarlet sheets at some points.

Investigations suggested the rain was red because winds had swept up dust from Arabia and dumped it on Kerala. But Godfrey Louis, a physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, after gathering samples left over from the rains, concluded this was nonsense. ‘If you look at these particles under a microscope, you can see they are not dust, they have a clear biological appearance.’

[ Read More ]

There’s more than one Dubai drama playing out on the world stage these days. Besides the fracas over whether U.S. ports should be overseen by Dubai Ports World (see BW Online, 3/6/06, “The Real Shipping News”) the emirate is gaining widespread attention and generating buzz in architecture, design, and real-estate circles. Dubai, one of the seven United Arab Emirates, is engaged in a building boom of epic proportions.

By the beginning of the next decade, relatively tiny Dubai — it’s smaller than Canada’s Prince Edward Island, and has a population of about 1.4 million citizens — will be home to an astonishing number of superlative architectural projects. These include Earth’s tallest skyscraper, the first luxury underwater hotel, and a man-made archipelago of private, residential islands (yes, the biggest development of its kind) that will resemble a map of the world when seen from above.

Most of Dubai’s ambitious building projects are in planning or early construction stages. The emirate’s current skyline is dotted with cranes. According to the most recent study published by the Dubai Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Dubai’s construction and building sector contributes 12.2% of the emirate’s non-oil GDP and has grown annually at an average rate of 27%.

……[ Read more ]

Don’t forget to check the slideshow

Source: Business Week

One of the three unsolved complex ciphers encoded by a new version of German Enigma machine in 1942 has been cracked by online amateur cryptologists. It has been solved using a code breaking-software run on a grid of home computers linked through internet. This attempt was started by Stephen krah who is interested in cryptography and open source software. The project named “Project M4” by Krah has 2,500 participants now.

The encrypted cipher which doesn’t make any sense is,

“NCZW VUSX PNYM INHZ XMQX SFWX WLKJ AHSH NMCO CCAK UQPM KCSM HKSE INJU SBLK IOSX CKUB HMLL XCSJ USRR DVKO HULX WCCB GVLI YXEO AHXR HKKF VDRE WEZL XOBA FGYU JQUK GRTV UKAM EURB VEKS UHHV OYHA BCJW MAKL FKLM YFVN RIZR VVRT KOFD ANJM OLBG FFLE OPRG TFLV RHOW OPBE KVWM UQFM PWPA RMFH AGKX IIBG”

and the cracked cipher after translation to English is very informative,

“Forced to submerge during attack. Depth charges. Last enemy position 0830h AJ 9863, [course] 220 degrees, [speed] 8 knots. [I am] following [the enemy]. [barometer] falls 14 mb, [wind] nor-nor-east, [force] 4, visibility 10 [nautical miles].”

It is believed that Enigma machine was “the backbone of German military and intelligence communication”. During the war, British team of codebreakers based in Bletchley Park were trying to decipher Enigma ciphers. They decoded thousands of these encrypted messages using early computers inorder to “head off U-boat attacks.

The unsolved cipher no.2 is,

“TMKF NWZX FFII YXUT IHWM DHXI FZEQ VKDV MQSW BQND YOZF TIWM JHXH YRPA CZUG RREM VPAN WXGT KTHN RLVH KZPG MNMV SECV CKHO INPL HHPV PXKM BHOK CCPD PEVX VVHO ZZQB IYIE OUSE ZNHJ KWHY DAGT XDJD JKJP KCSD SUZT QCXJ DVLP AMGQ KKSH PHVK SVPC BUWZ FIZP FUUP”

You can join the deciphering team in the Project M4 by allowing your computer to be used by the project.

I am always fascinated by cryptography and infact I attempted to make a program which would encrypt a message. I know the real cryptography involves lots of mathematics but I used a very simple method. Here is the screenshot of it:

The cryptogram of this line looks something like this;

Can anybody decipher this?;

MAG1%1AA(1G1.13B7AL0YA$1J1C0,A70GA>CRBV1)1TC?A\
0N1KC!AUA*C218A(121AC
A/AI1/1VA#161″1-0[AH0DB)CZA5ACB1A
0F0#0MC*CQBQ121=070O1*C.0,0+0NC4C/BF0]B9A!C”0T0R
C4C4B]1-C”B,15BKA[05B%A+C#C”B$0KBJA
A$C+BF000NBDA*C&CZA
W1^0=BZAQ0)0LB1ACC*C=BE1:1′A$BZBIA8C:1ZC+05AN0\
0ACXB/1K1?0W0S1J141 1MCN0(BF1J1906C41OAM0;0>
0&C91K0/0(B5CUA!0202B%C
QB’A116B1A!0&0Y0CC