Tech Today w/ Ken May

dsinc writes “The Transportation Security Administration announced it has finished removing from all airports the X-ray technology that produced graphic and controversial images of passengers passing through security screening checkpoints. The machines, which the TSA first deployed in 2008, provoked public outrage as the technology, better able than traditional X-rays to detect hidden contraband, also created images that appeared as if they were ‘virtual nudes.’ Critics called this an invasion of privacy and questioned whether the scanning devices truly lacked the ability to save the images, as the TSA claimed.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pretty wild, right? It’s a map of Pangea — a supercontinent that formed roughly 300 million years ago — mapped with contemporary geopolitical borders. Read more…        

phantomfive writes “Some countries are worried about the privacy implications of Google Maps, but Lithuania is using them to find tax cheats. ‘After Google’s car-borne cameras were driven through the Vilnius area last year, the tax men in this small Baltic nation got busy. They have spent months combing through footage looking for unreported taxable wealth. … Two recent cases netted $130,000 in taxes and penalties after investigators found houses photographed by Google that weren’t on official maps. … “We were very impressed,” said Modestas Kaseliauskas, head of the State Tax Authority. “We realized that we could do more with less and in shorter time.”‘ The people of Lithuania don’t seem to mind. ‘Authorities have been aided by the local populace. “We received even more support than we expected,” said Mr. Kaseliauskas.’” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Synthetic biology researchers at MIT are creating simple analog computers in living cells, complete with fluorescent “displays.” Rahul Sarpeshkar and Timothy K. Lu engineered genetic circuits in E. coli so that the bacteria glows with a brightness determined by the amount of certain chemicals surrounding it. From Science News: By making bacteria glow more or less brightly depending on the number of different chemicals around, the new circuit can compute answers to math problems, Lu’s team reports May 15 in Nature. To add 1 plus 1, for example, the circuit would detect two chemicals and crank up the bacteria’s glow to “2.” ” Analog circuits boost power in living computers ” (Science News) ” Cell-Based Computing Goes Analog ” (The Scientist) ” Synthetic analog computation in living cells ” (Nature)        

Britain’s largest ISP, British Telecom, has ragequit Yahoo! after learning that the internet giant had bought beloved microblogging site Tumblr. Just kidding! It’s actually sick of its customers’ Yahoo-provided email accounts getting hacked. [Telegraph]        

Currently up for $50,000 in funding on Kickstarter, the Wheelharp delivers the sounds of a chamber string orchestra via a keyboard and a full chromatic set of real strings. Oh, and it’s pretty much the most striking instrument we’ve ever seen. Developed by Los Angeles-based Antiquity Music, the device reacts to a user’s press of the keys by moving a corresponding string to a rotating wheel with an edge that bows the string. The instrument gives the player plenty of controls; the right pedal controls wheel speed, while the left mans the strings’ damper system. Though an early version was demoed at NAMM this year, the Wheelharp is currently in R&D mode, and Antiquity plans to put much of the Kickstarter money toward researching the optimal string selection. Hit up the source link to hear the instrument in action. Just don’t get too excited; the instrument will retail for a cool $12,500 — or a slightly more palatable $10,000 through the crowdfunding site. Filed under: Misc , Peripherals , Alt Comments Via: Laughing Squid Source: The Wheelharp (Kickstarter)

New submitter Mistakill writes “It seems the case against Kim Dotcom for the NZ Police isn’t going well, with Kim Dotcom scoring another victory in his legal battles. Police have been told they must search everything they seized from Dotcom and hand back what is not relevant to the U.S. extradition claims. Justice Helen Winkelmann told police their complaints about the cost and time of the exercise were effectively their own fault for indiscriminately seizing material in the first place. She wrote, ‘The warrants could not authorize the permanent seizure of hard drives and digital materials against the possibility that they might contain relevant material, with no obligation to check them for relevance. They could not authorize the shipping offshore of those hard drives with no check to see if they contained relevant material. Nor could they authorize keeping the plaintiffs out of their own information, including information irrelevant to the offenses.’” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Not content to just turn paint into a power source , revolutionize headphones , suck pollution out of oceans , bestow us with hyper-fast upload times , and pretty much anything else you can dream up, graphene is at it once again. And this time, the supermaterial that keeps on giving is opening the door to better low-light photos in the form of an image sensor that can catch light 1,000 times better than traditional sensors. Oh, and it uses 10 times less energy, too. Read more…        

By David Christopher Bell  Published: May 31st, 2013  Christopher Lee — the English actor most famous for playing Dracula, Saruman, Count Dooku, and the mad scientist in Gremlins 2 — recently turned 91 years old. While most people commemorating their 10th decade of life would limit the celebration to

For most of us, molecular bonding only really exists as a classroom concept. Some scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory can now claim more tangible knowledge, however: they’re the first to have taken truly clear snapshots of bonding in progress. While trying to create graphene nanostructures and observe them with an atomic force microscope , a lab team spotted molecules forming their individual, atom-level links during a chemical reaction. The resulting shots were nearly textbook material, too — as the molecules were neatly placed on a flat surface, the researchers identified the order and nature of each bond. While the images will only be immediately useful for the nanostructure research at hand, they may add a welcome dash of reality to future chemistry lessons. Filed under: Science , Alt Comments Via: Phys.org Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory