Water-rich gem points to vast ‘oceans’ beneath the Earth
A University of Alberta diamond scientist has found the first terrestrial sample of a water-rich gem that yields new evidence about the existence of large volumes of water deep beneath the Earth.
An international team of scientists led by Graham Pearson, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Arctic Resources at the U of A, has discovered the first-ever sample of a mineral called ringwoodite. Analysis of the mineral shows it contains a significant amount of water—1.5 per cent of its weight—a finding that confirms scientific theories about vast volumes of water trapped 410 to 660 kilometres beneath the Earth, between the upper and lower mantle.
“This sample really provides extremely strong confirmation that there are local wet spots deep in the Earth in this area,” said Pearson, a professor in the Faculty of Science, whose findings were published March 13 in Nature. “That particular zone in the Earth, the transition zone, might have as much water as all the world’s oceans put together.”
http://phys.org/news/2014-03-water-rich-gem-vast-oceans-beneath.html
EA games web server hacked to host phishing website
A web server belonging to the games company Electronic Arts has been hacked and is now hosting a phishing website, according to an internet security firm.
The website that has been put in place by hackers asks users to enter their Apple IDs – the credentials needed to access services like Apple’s iTunes.
A second screen then asks users to enter further personal information, including credit card details.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-13846031
What happened when? How the brain stores memories by time
Before I left the house this morning, I let the cat out and started the dishwasher. Or was that yesterday? Very often, our memories must distinguish not just what happened and where, but when an event occurred—and what came before and after. New research from the University of California, Davis, Center for Neuroscience shows that a part of the brain called the hippocampus stores memories by their “temporal context”—what happened before, and what came after.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-03-brain-memories.html
Telescope captures view of gravitational waves
Astronomers have peered back to nearly the dawn of time and found what seems to be the long-sought ‘smoking gun’ for the theory that the Universe underwent a spurt of wrenching, exponential growth called inflation during the first tiny fraction of a second of its existence.
http://www.nature.com/news/telescope-captures-view-of-gravitational-waves-1.14876
Renewable energy: Back the renewables boom
Low-carbon technologies are getting better and cheaper each year, but continued public-policy support is needed to sustain progress, says Jessika E. Trancik.
Certain nations are now clear leaders in innovation. Japan dominates in terms of cumulative energy patents filed. But in the past ten years’ growth has been driven by China and the United States, which together account for roughly 60% of renewables patents published globally per year and 60% of all energy patents. China has been the front runner in coal patents for 15 years and, in the past decade, has overtaken the United States in annual patent numbers for wind and solar as well. Europe has seen a tripling of renewables technologies patents in the past decade, whereas the region’s patents related to fossil fuels have declined.
If costs keep falling at historic rates, Solar could be cheaper than coal by 2020.
http://www.nature.com/news/renewable-energy-back-the-renewables-boom-1.14873
Operation Windigo: Linux server-side malware campaign exposed
Security researchers announced Tuesday a multi-year cybercriminal campaign called Windigo in which a malicious group compromised thousands of Linux and Unix servers. Once infected, victims’ systems were used to steal credentials, redirect web traffic to malicious content and send millions of spam messages per day.
The security solutions company ESET said that Windigo, while largely unnoticed by the security community, has been in operation for more than two and a half years. Pierre-Marc Bureau, security intelligence program manager at ESET, said Windigo currently has 10,000 servers under its control. “This number is significant if you consider each of these systems have access to significant bandwidth, storage, computing power and memory.” Exploring this campaign, the ESET security research team collaborated with CERT-Bund, the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing and other agencies, observing that, once infected, victims’ systems are used to redirect web traffic tomalicious content and send spam.
http://phys.org/news/2014-03-windigo-linux-server-side-malware-campaign.html
Ukraine: Army raises $1m via text appeal for funds
Ukrainians have donated over one million dollars to the country’s impoverished armed forces, after the Ministry of Defence set up a telephone appeal for funds, it seems.
The ministry’s official Facebook page says: “Support the Army of Ukraine! Citizens’ campaign to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine with material, technical and medical supplies.” People donated some 9.9m hryvnyas ($1m; £611,000), a proportion of which coming from their mobile phones in less than three days, the ministry says.
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-26631775
Study suggests people willing to take orders from a robot boss
A study conducted by a team of researchers at Human Computer Interaction (MCI) Lab in Manitoba Canada, has revealed evidence that suggests that people can be prodded into doing something they don’t want to do, by a robot. They’ve posted a blog entry on their web site describing an experiment they carried out to learn more about how people might respond to a robot boss, versus a human one, and the results they found.
http://phys.org/news/2014-03-people-robot-boss-video.html#jCp
