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6.23.2009

A new type of virus... Hoping it's pandemic!

[That's right! Unstoppable!!! Happy Summer Solstice! -INPhobe]

Crop Circles -2009 Update- Italy

[From Italy...
Formation @ Cascina Martina - Riva Presso Chieri, Torino - reported June 20, 2009]

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/inter2009/italy/cascina_martina_03.jpg

Prototype phone recharges without wires

http://ca.tech.yahoo.com/blogs/the_working_guy/rss/article/3638
http://a323.yahoofs.com/ymg/null__15/null-334319196-1245171957.jpg?ym1TWbBD4J6t_jgo
Pardon the cliche, but it's one of the holiest of Holy Grails of technology: Wireless power. And while early lab experiments have been able to "beam" electricity a few feet to power a light bulb, the day when our laptops and cell phones can charge without having to plug them in to a wall socket still seems decades in the future.
Nokia, however, has taken another baby step in that direction with the invention of a cell phone that recharges itself using a unique system: It harvests ambient radio waves from the air, and turns that energy into usable power. Enough, at least, to keep a cell phone from running out of juice.
While "traditional" (if there is such a thing) wireless power systems are specifically designed with a transmitter and receiver in mind, Nokia's system isn't finicky about where it gets its wireless waves. TV, radio, other mobile phone systems -- all of this stuff just bounces around the air and most of it is wasted, absorbed into the environment or scattered into the ether. Nokia picks up all the bits and pieces of these waves and uses the collected electromagnetic energy to create electrical current, then uses that to recharge the phone's battery. A huge range of frequencies can be utilized by the system (there's no other way, really, as the energy in any given wave is infinitesimal). It's the same idea that Tesla was exploring 100 years ago, just on a tiny scale.
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Work begins on world's deepest underground lab

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_UNDERGROUND_SCIENCE?SITE=MAFIT&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/strange_spc_dark_matter_02.jpg
Far below the Black Hills of South Dakota, crews are building the world's deepest underground science lab at a depth equivalent to more than six Empire State buildings - a place uniquely suited to scientists' quest for mysterious particles known as dark matter.
Scientists, politicians and other officials gathered Monday for a groundbreaking of sorts at a lab 4,850 foot below the surface of an old gold mine that was once the site of Nobel Prize-winning physics research.
The site is ideal for experiments because its location is largely shielded from cosmic rays that could interfere with efforts to prove the existence of dark matter, which is thought to make up nearly a quarter of the mass of the universe.
[...]
The first dark matter experiment will be the Large Underground Xenon detector experiment - or LUX - a project to detect weakly interacting particles that could give scientists greater insight into the Big Bang explosion believed to have formed the universe.
Shutt, along with Brown University's Rick Gaitskell and nearly a dozen collaborators will work at the site to search for dark matter, which does not emit detectable light or radiation. But scientists say its presence can be inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter.
Scientists believe most of the dark matter in the universe contains no atoms and does not interact with ordinary matter through electromagnetic forces. They are trying to discover exactly what it is, how much exists and what effect it may have on the future of the universe.
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Call for public inquiry into London's 7/7 Bombing

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6539369.ece
http://www.wearefine.org/uploads/%5CDISASTER%5C2006614_345816.jpg
An independent public inquiry should be held into how suicide terrorists were able to carry out the July 7 bombings, Scotland Yard’s former head of counter-terrorism says.
Andy Hayman, who was Assistant Commissioner for Special Operations at the time of the bombings in 2005, is the first figure from the security establishment to break ranks and call for an open inquiry.
Almost four years after Mohammad Sidique Khan and his Leeds-based cell carried out the bombings, Mr Hayman says that he is “uncomfortable” with the official position that an inquiry would divert resources from the fight against terrorism. In his book, The Terrorist Hunters, extracts from which are published in The Times today, Mr Hayman says: “Incidents of less gravity have attracted the status of a public inquiry — train crashes, a death in custody, and even other terrorist attacks. How can there not be a full, independent public inquiry into the deaths of 52 commuters on London’s transport system?
“There has been no overview, no pulling together of each strand of review, no one can be sure if key issues have been missed.”
Survivors of the July 7 bombings and families of the victims are taking High Court action over the refusal to grant them an independent inquiry.
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[For those that still have not seen '7/7 Ripple Effect'...]
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Air France "Black Box" Signals Located

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/06/23/world/international-uk-france-crash.html
http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/fdr_sidefront_lg.jpg
Signals from the flight data recorders of the Air France airliner that crashed into the Atlantic killing all 228 people on board have been located, Le Monde newspaper said on its website Tuesday.
An Air France spokeswoman said she could not confirm the report. The Transport Ministry and the air accident investigation office could not be reached immediately for comment.
Le Monde said French naval vessels had picked up a weak signal from the flight recorders and that a mini submarine had been dispatched Monday to try and find the "black boxes" on the bottom of the rugged ocean floor.
[...]
Locator beacons, known as "pingers," on the flight recorders send an electronic impulse every second for at least 30 days. The signal can be heard up to 2 km (1.2 miles) away.
[...]
French vessels involved in the search operation include a nuclear submarine with advanced sonar equipment and a research ship equipped with mini submarines.
The remote location in the Atlantic as well as the depth and surface of the ocean floor have made the search especially difficult and the wreckage could lie anywhere between a depth of 1 km (0.6 miles) and 4 km (2.5 miles).
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Vatican’s Celestial Eye, Seeking Not Angels but Data

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/science/23Vatican.html?_r=1&hpw
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/06/23/science/23vatican-600.jpg
[...]
“Got it. O.K., it’s happy,” says Christopher J. Corbally, the Jesuit priest who is vice director of the Vatican Observatory Research Group, as he sits in the control room making adjustments. The idea is not to watch for omens or angels but to do workmanlike astronomy that fights the perception that science and Catholicism necessarily conflict [Perception, is it?].
[...]
The Roman Catholic Church’s interest in the stars began with purely practical concerns when in the 16th century Pope Gregory XIII called on astronomy to correct for the fact that the Julian calendar had fallen out of sync with the sky. In 1789, the Vatican opened an observatory in the Tower of the Winds, which it later relocated to a hill behind St. Peter’s Dome. In the 1930s, church astronomers moved to Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s summer residence. As Rome’s illumination, the electrical kind, spread to the countryside, the church began looking for a mountaintop in a dark corner of Arizona.
Building on Mount Graham was a struggle. Apaches said the observatory was an affront to the mountain spirits. Environmentalists said it was a menace to a subspecies of red squirrel. There were protests and threats of sabotage. It wasn’t until 1995, three years after the edict of Inquisition was lifted against Galileo, that the Vatican’s new telescope made its first scientific observations.
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