Tech News

We’re supposed to find the Maryland angle on things, so here it is: the scientist credited with bringing the famous Hope diamond to the Smithsonian, George S. Switzer, died this week in a MARYLAND assisted living facility.

I saw the Hope diamond once. I didn't think it was so hot.

But there’s a fascinating tale about how unlucky the diamond was for people who came into contact with it. According to the Washington Post obituary on Switzer, the Frenchman who smuggled the original rough stone out of India, died after being attacked by a pack of wild dogs. Princess DeLamballe, an early owner in France, was fatally mauled by a mob and Marie Antoinette, who also wore the diamond, lost her head.

Still, people wanted it. You can read more about it here.

(Photo credit: The Associated Press) 

The European Space Agency's Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) is making its first attempted automated docking with the International Space Station this morning. You can watch it live on NASA TV.

Observers on the ground have been watching the ISS and ATV for days as the latter has gradually closed the distance between itself and the station.

UPDATE: Docking successful at 10:45 a.m.

Kinda reminds me of the X-Wing Fighters in the Star Wars movies. Stumbled across this less-than-successful attempt to build and launch a life-size X-Wing ship. Duck!

A scientist at the University of California at Riverside is working on a scheme to turn thousands of laptop computers into a sensitive network of seisometers, capable of delivering early warnings of impending earthquakes via the Internet.

It turns out many laptops already contain the necessary sensor. They're called accelerometers - sensors on a chip, much like those that sense car crashes and trigger your airbag. (Who knew?) I suspect the gizmos are designed to help hard drives protect themselves from jolts when laptops are bumped or dropped.

Anyway, with the proper free software and an Internet connection, those accelerometers can sense unusual tremors, and communicate the data to a central computer through the Internet. With hundreds, or thousands reporting, along with longitude and latitude data, the computers can figure out how big the quake is, where it originated and where the ripples in the Earth's crust are headed - and do it faster than the existing seismograph networks.

Coupled with an Internet alert system, that could provide a valuable 10 or 20 seconds of warning time. People might be able to brace themselves, dive under a desk, get into a door jamb or flee the building.

A few hundred computers - just MACs and Thinkpads so far - are already hooked up to the "Quake Catcher Network" and giving the idea a shakedown cruise. Here's more.

The developers are also working on accelerometers that can be attached to laptops with a USB connector. For those of us whose computers are acceleration-challenged.

Photo: Lloyd Fox, Sun photographer 

Childs Walker's article on the Orioles opening day got me thinking about fan loyalty and wondering what kind of research has been done on the subject. A quick search of the scholarly literature turned up couple of interesting studies.

Fan loyalty becomes strained when two teams are located close together, according to a 2004 study out of the University of Michigan. Major league baseball teams that are close neighbors, it found, see less game attendance than teams with no other franchises nearby.

Also, when a new team moves into an area, there is an initial drain on the established team’s fan base. As I read it, the Nationals probably stole certain disloyal - or fed up - Orioles fans.

Dextre, the giant robot assembled by astronauts during last month's visit to the International Space Station by the space Shuttle Endeavour, is up and running. That's him, above, at the end of the Canadian-built "arm." In fact, the whole assembly - arm and robot - were built by Canadians. What are those people up to?

NASA said Dextre has already demanded respect and obedience from its human companions, under a New Robotic Order established on board the station.

Here, read it for yourself.

AP photo/Cumberland Times News

There's a new study out that concludes that smoking bans in bars are causing MORE drunk driving accidents.

Researchers in Wisconsin looked at areas that enacted smoking bans from 2000 to 2005 and cross-checked those areas with information on fatal vehicle crashes involving alcohol.

The result – an estimated 13.44 percent increase in fatal accidents. The reason?

Click here to see what Gartner, Network World and other experts say about the new data center. Read more

For years, women have been able to go to the drugstore to answer a question: pregnant or not? Now science has taken testing a step further, and those same drugstore shelves are stocking kits to answer another, equally pressing question: daddy or not?

For years, women have been able to go to the drugstore to answer a question: pregnant or not? Now science has taken testing a step further, and those same drugstore shelves are stocking kits to answer another, equally pressing question: daddy or not?

For years, women have been able to go to the drugstore to answer a question: pregnant or not? Now science has taken testing a step further, and those same drugstore shelves are stocking kits to answer another, equally pressing question: daddy or not?