Science or Science Fiction

Ever since U.S. veterans started reporting health problems after the 1991 Gulf War,
interest in the use and effects of DU munitions has steadily increased. Some
investigations have proclaimed DU virtually harmless, but other inquiries have blamed
DU for thousands of cancers and other effects. While emerging scientific opinion
appears to be carving out a middle-ground position that DU can cause significant health
and environmental effects depending on a variety of conditions, the polar extremes
continue to dominate public discussions about DU munitions...


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Science Or Science Fiction? - WISE Uranium Project 

The Time Machine

Author: H.G. Wells

 

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way—marking the points with a lean forefinger—as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it:) and his fecundity.
‘You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted.


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The Time Machine - World History International 

The Time Machine

Author: H G Wells
 



The Time Machine was first published in 1895, making it the oldest book on the list. Considered by many to be one of the greatest science fiction novels of all the time. this book coined the term "Time Machine" which is almost exclusively used to refer to any device that allows humans to move through time.


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32-Core CPUs From Intel and AMD

Article by: Christopher Null, PCWorld  

What is it? With the gigahertz race largely abandoned, both AMD and Intel are trying to pack more cores onto a die in order to continue to improve processing power and aid with multitasking operations. Miniaturizing chips further will be key to fitting these cores and other components into a limited space. Intel will roll out 32-nanometer processors (down from today's 45nm chips) in 2009.

When is it coming? Intel has been very good about sticking to its road map. A six-core CPU based on the Itanium design should be out imminently, when Intel then shifts focus to a brand-new architecture called Nehalem, to be marketed as Core i7. Core i7 will feature up to eight cores, with eight-core systems available in 2009 or 2010. (And an eight-core AMD project called Montreal is reportedly on tap for 2009.)

After that, the timeline gets fuzzy. Intel reportedly canceled a 32-core project called Keifer, slated for 2010, possibly because of its complexity (the company won't confirm this, though). That many cores requires a new way of dealing with memory; apparently you can't have 32 brains pulling out of one central pool of RAM. But we still expect cores to proliferate when the kinks are ironed out: 16 cores by 2011 or 2012 is plausible (when transistors are predicted to drop again in size to 22nm), with 32 cores by 2013 or 2014 easily within reach. Intel says "hundreds" of cores may come even farther down the line.

The future of your PC's hardware

Article by: Christopher Null, PCWorld  

Memristor: A Groundbreaking New Circuit

What is it? As its name implies, the memristor can "remember" how much current has passed through it. And by alternating the amount of current that passes through it, a memristor can also become a one-element circuit component with unique properties. Most notably, it can save its electronic state even when the current is turned off, making it a great candidate to replace today's flash memory.

Memristors will theoretically be cheaper and far faster than flash memory, and allow far greater memory densities. They could also replace RAM chips as we know them, so that, after you turn off your computer, it will remember exactly what it was doing when you turn it back on, and return to work instantly. This lowering of cost and consolidating of components may lead to affordable, solid-state computers that fit in your pocket and run many times faster than today's PCs.

Someday the memristor could spawn a whole new type of computer, thanks to its ability to remember a range of electrical states rather than the simplistic "on" and "off" states that today's digital processors recognize. By working with a dynamic range of data states in an analog mode, memristor-based computers could be capable of far more complex tasks than just shuttling ones and zeroes around.

When is it coming? Researchers say that no real barrier prevents implementing the memristor in circuitry immediately. But it's up to the business side to push products through to commercial reality. Memristors made to replace flash memory (at a lower cost and lower power consumption) will likely appear first; HP's goal is to offer them by 2012. Beyond that, memristors will likely replace both DRAM and hard disks in the 2014-to-2016 time frame. As for memristor-based analog computers, that step may take 20-plus years.

How to measure a website's IQ

Article by: Tom Simonite, online technology editor

The creator of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee , has made an odd request : for a kind of rating system to help people distinguish sites that can be trusted to tell the truth, and those that can't.

Berners-Lee was speaking at the launch of the World Wide Web Foundation , which aims to ensure that everyone in the world benefits as the web evolves.

In his speech he referred to the way fears that the LHC could destroy the worldspread like wildfire online. As the BBC puts it , he explained that "there needed to be new systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources."

He went on to say that he didn't think "a simple number like an IQ rating" is a good idea: "I'd be interested in different organisations labelling websites in different ways". Whatever process is used to hand out the labels, it sounds like a bad idea to me.

Berners-Lee himself directed us towards some of the its biggest problems:

"On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable...A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging."

There are plenty of arguments online already about whether Scientology is a cult. I find it unlikely anyone will be keen to step in and label sites on either side as not to be trusted. Others might reasonably argue that all religions - whether established or not - should come with a warning message.

As for wading in to put a stop to conspiracy theories, I can't image anything their proponents could benefit from more.

Berners-Lee also mentioned the system would help people find out the real science behind, for example, the LHC's risks. You might think handing out rating for sites about science would be easier, with publishers of peer-reviewed science, for example, receiving a top rating without problems.

But there will be papers in the archives of any journal that have been entirely superseded. And a whole lot more that present results that are valid, but can be misleading to some readers. Web licences to ensure that people only read sites they can handle are the next logical step.

Fortunately it's much more likely that the whole idea will quietly be forgotten, which will at least prevent Berners-Lee receiving one of the first "potentially misleading" badges for thinking it up in the first place.

Let's hope the World Wide Web Foundation  and its laudable goals have a rosier future.

AVG Internet Security 2012

AVG Internet Security 2012
Protection that actually speeds up your PC
Some security products slow down your PC; AVG Internet Security 2012 speeds it up, by accelerating the download of content-rich files. Faster system start-up and support for Flash and HD video means you can enjoy online video like YouTube faster than ever before.

AVG Accelerator
AVG Accelerator maximises your computer�s connectivity to deliver content faster. It accelerates the download of binary files and minimizes the hangs and delays while watching videos on YouTube. AVG Accelerator is enabled as a default setting when you switch on.
AVG System Tools
AVG�s System Tools monitors your PC to allow you to turn off unneeded applications that auto-run at Windows start-up � plus the System Monitor option also provides information about which processes are running. Using this tool, you can make informed decisions about the trust level inside your computer and the safety of your files.
Computer Hardware
Minimum system requirements:
Processor Intel Pentium 1.5 GHz or faster
Memory 512 MB of RAM
Hard disk free space (for installation) 1000 MB
Recommended system requirements
Processor Intel Pentium 1.8 GHz or faster
Memory 512 MB RAM
Hard disk free space (for installation) 1550 MB
Web browser
AVG�s LinkScanner- technology is compatible with:
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Mozilla Firefox
Google Chrome
Operating systems
AVG Internet Security 2012 is compatible with:
Operating System AVG Internet Security 2012
MS Windows XP
MS Windows XP Pro x64 Edition
MS Windows Vista
MS Windows Vista x64 Edition
MS Windows 7
MS Windows 7 x64 Edition
Install Notes
1. Disconnect from the internet. This is important.
2. Install the program and register with one of the given serials.
3. DONE!�

Download  AVG Internet Security v2012 mirror