For everything from family to computers…
Google isn’t giving up on their vision of seeing cars driving themselves and passengers in the near future. After Nevada passed legislation regarding the requirements for driverless cars, Google has been granted a license to test their new pet project out in the desert. There are a few rules however, to make sure that these Priuses (Prii, Prioria, Priores?) don’t go rogue and cause some major damage.
Nevada has said that if you want to test these cars you need to have an insurance bond of $1 million and that the testing time and area for these cars must be laid out thoroughly. Don’t expect to be driving down the highway and seeing one next to you in rush hour anytime soon. The cars even get their own license plate, featuring a red back with an infinity symbol on it. Nevada DMV Director Bruce Breslow says, â€I felt using the infinity symbol was the best way to represent the ‘car of the future.’†Anyone ready to give up their lead foot to let the car drive itself?
Via: Arstechnica
from Droid Life
The thugs in charge of recruiting kids for use in bloody African wars are finding their efforts are being hampered in Somalia. Not through the direct actions of the government or the UN, but because kids now have enough things to do in their spare time to keep them off the streets. More »
from Kotaku
The Air Force’s F-22 Raptor stealth fighters and their faulty oxygen systems are choking their pilots. So now, Maj. Jeremy Gordon and Capt. Josh Wilson, both experienced Raptor fliers with the Virginia Air National Guard’s 192nd Fighter Wing, have refused to fly an airplane that they claim is fatally flawed.
from Wired Top Stories
The changes aim to allay concerns that chemicals used in a common method of extracting natural gas can contaminate groundwater.
Am I the only one that thinks this is a bad idea??!! Â o.O
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It’s finally out. After months of will-they-won’t they and should-they-shouldn’t-they deliberations, Nature has finally published a paper about a mutant strain of bird flu that can spread between mammals.
The strain was produced by Yoshihiro Kawaoka from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was trying to understand whether wild bird flu viruses have the potential to start a pandemic. These viruses can occasionally infect humans, but so far, they’ve been contained by their inability to efficiently jump from human to human. Kawaoka’s work makes it clear that they can evolve that ability.
Kawaoka’s study, along with a similar one from Ron Fouchier, has been the subject of intense debate for the last several months (catch up on the backstory here). What are the benefits of the research, and do they outweigh the risks? Now that the paper is finally out, we can start to answer those questions.
I’ve written about the paper for Nature News, focusing very heavily on the science rather than the politics. Head over there for a tighter version of this story. In this post, I’m going to highlight four important themes from the paper.
One: H5N1 can evolve to spread …
from Discover Magazine
