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	<title>Summit Post</title>
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	<link>http://www.bethge.org</link>
	<description>Science &#38; Technology // blogged from San Francisco, CA // by Philip Bethge</description>
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		<title>SPIEGEL Interview with Sci-Fi Author Daniel Suarez: ‘We Have To Regain Control Over Our Own Data’</title>
		<link>http://www.bethge.org/?p=1128</link>
		<comments>http://www.bethge.org/?p=1128#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Jun 2010 22:26:17 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Interviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[artificial intelligence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[computer sciences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[internet]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Programmer Daniel Suarez has written books about a future where human lives are controlled by software. Suarez&#8217; sci-fi scenario involves a malicious, murdering &#8216;bot&#8217; network. It&#8217;s fiction &#8212; but Suarez warns that the groundwork for such a future is being laid by the likes of Facebook, Twitter and mobile phone firms. SPIEGEL: Mr. Suarez, in the novels &#8220;Daemon&#8221; and the sequel &#8220;Freedom&#8221; you have invented a world in which small software applications that run automated tasks &#8212; generally called &#8220;bots&#8221; &#8212; control us and determine our destiny. Science fiction writers have often been prescient: Could this be a warning that applies to our current reality? Daniel Suarez: Well, the sequel is certainly fiction &#8212; but my fiction is only just over the horizon. I present a world that&#8217;s different but it&#8217;s familiar enough that it freaks people out a little. And it should. Because even today, we are surrounded by an army of bots that influence our lives profoundly. SPIEGEL: Some examples? Suarez: Sure, let&#8217;s take a look at what recently happened at Wall Street. SPIEGEL: On May 6, the Dow Jones suddenly dropped by nearly 1,000 points. Suarez: And then (bounced) back a couple of minutes later. And those [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Oil Disaster in the Gulf Coast: ‘I Have to Keep My Good Spirits’</title>
		<link>http://www.bethge.org/?p=1064</link>
		<comments>http://www.bethge.org/?p=1064#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:56:04 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[SPIEGEL-Online International: For as long as he can remember Floyd Lasseigne has been a fisherman on Grand Isle, off the coast of Louisiana. Now he has to stand by and watch as the BP oil spill destroys his life. The oysters lie in the water like silent harbingers of the disaster. A shiny film of oil washes over the shells. The broth swashes over the flat oyster bed that belongs to Floyd Lasseigne. Using a small axe the fisherman extracts a few oysters from the ground and carefully pries them open. Slippery white oyster flesh slides out. Lasseigne bends down and holds his nose closely to the sea creature. &#8220;You can smell the oil in them,&#8221; the sturdy man says and hands the oyster over. Then he looks away, his eyes red from many sleepless nights, and looks over to the marsh grass, the stalks smudged with oil up to the tideline. &#8220;It makes me sick,&#8221; Lasseigne says. &#8220;This is my livelihood and now I see it going down the drain.&#8221; By late afternoon the fisherman leaves to visit his oyster beds on Madacant Island. He travels over Bayou Rigaud in his flat boat with its two outboard motors, going [...]]]></description>
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		<title>BP’s Oil Disaster: The Dangers and Difficulties of ‘Bottom Kill’</title>
		<link>http://www.bethge.org/?p=1034</link>
		<comments>http://www.bethge.org/?p=1034#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 21:09:35 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Stories]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[SPIEGEL-Online International: BP has only one arrow left in its quiver, a method known as &#8216;bottom kill.&#8217; The idea is for relief wells to stop the gushing oil from below, but the technical challenges are formidable. Past experiences show that the oil may continue flowing into late autumn. For the engineers, it was a blessing in disguise. They had drilled to a depth of up to 3,500 meters (11,500 feet) below the sea floor when gas and oil suddenly began shooting upward. But there was no explosion. The 69 workers at the site were evacuated and no one was killed. It was the morning of Aug. 21, 2009, when engineers lost control of the well beneath the West Atlas oil rig in the Timor Sea off Australia&#8217;s northern coast. It took 10 weeks to stop the flow of oil. By that time, about 4,300 tons of oil had flowed into the sea. It was only by drilling a so-called relief well that the Thai company overseeing the operation managed to pump enough mud into the well to cap the flow of oil. For the BP engineers attempting to stop the out-of-control well still gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Hidden Menace in the Gulf of Mexico: Oil Spill’s Real Threat Lies Beneath the Surface</title>
		<link>http://www.bethge.org/?p=1019</link>
		<comments>http://www.bethge.org/?p=1019#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:45:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Gulf of Mexico spill is vastly larger than the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989, but where is all the oil? While efforts to protect coastlines have been making the headlines, the real ecological catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is unfolding deep beneath the water&#8217;s surface. Samantha Joye was sure she was right. Somewhere down there, the toxic clouds were sure to exist. And now she was holding the evidence in her hands. A thin film of oil glistened in one of the small sample bottles Joye had filled with water taken from more than 1 kilometer (3,300 feet) beneath the surface. &#8220;You could see it. Everybody saw it,&#8221; Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia, &#8230; More Recommend on Facebook Tweet about it Tell a friend]]></description>
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		<title>US-Ölpest: „BP, du tötest unsere Tiere“</title>
		<link>http://www.bethge.org/?p=934</link>
		<comments>http://www.bethge.org/?p=934#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:52:35 +0000</pubDate>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bethge.org/?p=934</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[So lange er denken kann, ist Floyd Lasseigne Fischer auf Grand Isle vor der Küste Louisianas. Die Ölpest im Golf von Mexiko zerstört sein Leben. Die Austern liegen im Wasser wie stille Boten der Katastrophe. Ein silbrig glänzender Ölfilm zieht sich über die Schalen der Tiere. Schlierig schwappt die Brühe über die flache Austernbank von Floyd Lasseigne. Mit einem kleinen Beil löst der Fischer ein paar der Muscheln vom Grund und hebelt sie vorsichtig auf. Glitschiges, weißes Austernfleisch quillt heraus. Lasseigne beugt sich hinunter, hält die Nase ganz dicht an das Meerestier. „Man kann das Öl riechen“, sagt der stämmige Mann und reicht die Auster herüber. Dann wendet er den Blick ab, die Augen rotgeädert von Nächten ohne Schlaf, und blickt hinüber zu dem Marschgras, dessen Stängel bis zur Hochwasserlinie mit dreckig-braunem Öl verschmiert sind. „Die ganze Sache macht mich krank“, sagt Lasseigne: „das hier ist meine Leben, jetzt sehe ich, wie alles den Bach runtergeht.“ Am späten Nachmittag ist der Fischer aufgebrochen, um nach seinen Austerbänken vor Mendicant Island zu sehen. Den Bajou Rigaud ist er in seinem flachen Boot mit den zwei starken Außenbordern hinaufgefahren, vorbei an den Docks von Grand Isle, wie fast jeden Tag in den [...]]]></description>
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		<title>The Risky Hunt for the Last Oil Reserves: Does Deep Sea Drilling Have a Future?</title>
		<link>http://www.bethge.org/?p=922</link>
		<comments>http://www.bethge.org/?p=922#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 19:39:12 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[The oil catastrophe afflicting the Gulf of Mexico underscores just how dangerous offshore oil exploration can be. Oil companies are seeking to extract the planet&#8217;s last remaining barrels by drilling from ever-deeper sites on the ocean floor that wouldn&#8217;t even have been considered not too many years ago. The oil now coating the Gulf of Mexico in reddish brown streaks has a long journey behind it. Tracing that journey would require diving 1,500 meters (5,000 feet) into the ocean, passing through a massive layer of mud and finally pounding through hard salt. The oil originated more than four kilometers (two and a half miles) below the ocean floor, in rock layers that formed millions of years ago, during the Tertiary period. It&#8217;s scalding hot down there, a veritable journey into hell, but companies such as BP, Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron are daring to make the trip more and more often these days. Flying over the site where the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon sank in late April reveals dozens more oil platforms projecting out of the water on the horizon, like toys bobbing in a bathtub. &#8230; More Recommend on Facebook Tweet about it Tell a friend]]></description>
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		<title>Deep Trouble in the Gulf of Mexico: ‘A Disaster of Epic Proportions’</title>
		<link>http://www.bethge.org/?p=912</link>
		<comments>http://www.bethge.org/?p=912#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 10 May 2010 15:41:16 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[The oil spill from the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico could turn into the biggest environmental catastrophe in US history. It could take months to stop the oil flow, and the damage to the local economy and wildlife could be huge. The accident is likely to hamper US President Barack Obama&#8217;s plans to extend offshore drilling. Orange booms made of resilient rubber, filling with floating foam, serve as the front line in the battle against the oil. Workers are loading meter after meter of the booms from the pier at Bud&#8217;s Boat Rental onto Miss Katherine, a supply ship that normally carries crews and materials to the oil rigs. Captain Leonard Murrel glances sullenly over at his men and wrinkles his nose. A brisk ocean breeze is laden with the heavy odor of crude oil. &#8220;It&#8217;s really a huge mess out there,&#8221; says the weather-beaten American, who has been working in the coastal town of Venice on the southeastern tip of the Mississippi Delta for the last 10 years. &#8220;I&#8217;ve never seen anything like it before.&#8221;&#8230; More Recommend on Facebook Tweet about it Tell a friend]]></description>
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		<title>The Best Translation Program Yet: Google Delivers Foreign Tongues at the Press of a Button</title>
		<link>http://www.bethge.org/?p=899</link>
		<comments>http://www.bethge.org/?p=899#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 10 May 2010 15:26:11 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[A German scientist has developed one of the first translation programs suitable for everyday use. Sheer computing power gives the Google software surprisingly good results &#8212; perhaps the best yet seen created by a machine. It&#8217;s a good sign when the creator of a piece of software ends up using it. On a recent trip to Japan, Franz Och, who doesn&#8217;t speak Japanese, was able to decipher restaurant menus and even read local news &#8212; using his mobile phone, which provided him with the translations within seconds. Och spent the last six years developing Google Translate, a translation program, at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, &#8220;and so far I&#8217;ve never really used it myself,&#8221; Och admits. But then the 38-year-old research scientist has a change of heart and adds, &#8220;I am very happy with what we have achieved.&#8221; Och, a German citizen, is the behind-the-scenes star of a segment of the software industry that has taken on a challenge no less daunting than tearing down global language barriers. In his job at Google, &#8230;. More Recommend on Facebook Tweet about it Tell a friend]]></description>
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		<title>Small Is Beautiful: Nuclear Industry Pins Hopes on Mini-Reactors</title>
		<link>http://www.bethge.org/?p=778</link>
		<comments>http://www.bethge.org/?p=778#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:19:25 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[The nuclear energy industry hopes to secure its future through miniature nuclear reactors. The small underground plants will supposedly be safer than large plants, and would lower the cost of electricity from nuclear power. But critics say that the electricity the plants produce will be too expensive and warn of the risk of proliferation. In Galena, a town in icy central Alaska, energy is indispensable &#8212; but expensive. Although diesel generators provide plenty of electricity, the town&#8217;s roughly 600 residents regularly receive monthly electric bills in the hundreds of dollars. But the future could soon arrive in this tiny town on the Yukon River. &#8220;Super-Safe, Small and Simple,&#8221; or &#8220;4S,&#8221; is the name of a machine that could soon be buried 30 meters (98 feet) below the icy soil and placed into service. &#8230; More Recommend on Facebook Tweet about it Tell a friend]]></description>
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		<title>Google Co-Founder on Pulling out of China: &#8216;It Was a Real Step Backward&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.bethge.org/?p=769</link>
		<comments>http://www.bethge.org/?p=769#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 31 Mar 2010 05:59:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Last week, Google announced it would withdraw its Chinese operations from Beijing and instead serve the market from freer Hong Kong. The Internet giant&#8217;s co-founder, Sergey Brin, 36, discusses his company&#8217;s troubles in China and its controversial decision to pull up stakes and leave. SPIEGEL: With your decision to close Google&#8217;s Chinese Web site, you are the first major company to have challenged the government in Beijing in this way. Are you powerful enough to take on an entire country? Brin: I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s a question of taking on China. In fact, I am a great admirer of both China and the Chinese government for the progress they have made. It is really opposing censorship and speaking out for the freedom of political dissent, and that&#8217;s the key issue from our side. SPIEGEL: Four years ago, you allowed your service to be censored. Why have you changed your mind now? Brin: The hacking attacks were the straw that broke the camel&#8217;s back. &#8230; More Recommend on Facebook Tweet about it Tell a friend]]></description>
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		<title>Saving Moon Trash: Urine Containers, &#8216;Space Boots&#8217; and Artifacts Aren&#8217;t Just Junk, Argue Archaeologists</title>
		<link>http://www.bethge.org/?p=756</link>
		<comments>http://www.bethge.org/?p=756#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:38:59 +0000</pubDate>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bethge.org/?p=756</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[California has named the remains of the Apollo 11 mission a state historical resource &#8212; to the delight of the young profession of space archaeologists. They fear that the trash and equipment left behind by the United States&#8217; journeys to the moon could someday wind up for sale on eBay if they aren&#8217;t protected. There is an unwritten law in America&#8217;s national parks: Carry out what you bring in. When they visited the moon, though, the Americans weren&#8217;t nearly as considerate or in touch with nature. Astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong left behind more than 100 items when they left the moon on July 21, 1969, at 5:54 p.m., Earth Time. The items included four urine containers, several airsickness bags, a Hasselblad camera, lunar overshoes and a complete moon-landing step. The mission was historically significant. But are the urine containers? California historic preservationists think so. They recently registered the remains of the Apollo 11 mission in the so-called Sea of Tranquility as an &#8220;Historical Resource.&#8221; The designation gave a boost to an academic discipline that has been considered irrelevant until now: space archaeology. &#8216;A Sacred Site of World History&#8217; &#8220;It&#8217;s about time that we acknowledged the importance of these [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Tribulations at Toyota: The Search for the Gas Pedal Flaw</title>
		<link>http://www.bethge.org/?p=746</link>
		<comments>http://www.bethge.org/?p=746#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:59:54 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[Toyota has recalled millions of vehicles due to reports of sticking gas pedals and unintended acceleration. But finding out exactly what causes the problem has proven difficult. An explanation for why most of the accidents have occurred in the US has likewise proven elusive. It is an agonizing predicament that Toyota finds itself in &#8212; the most excruciating in the company&#8217;s history. Vehicles accelerating on their own continue to cause problems, and the inability to bring the matter to a close could spell ruin for the company. Worn down Toyota managers wanted to bring a little optimism to the Geneva Motor Show last week, but the latest bad news &#8212; that repairs failed to solve the carmaker&#8217;s gas pedal problem &#8212; ruined the mood. Numerous Toyota drivers in the United States &#8230; More Recommend on Facebook Tweet about it Tell a friend]]></description>
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		<title>Modern Day Flintstones: A Stone Age Subculture Takes Shape</title>
		<link>http://www.bethge.org/?p=673</link>
		<comments>http://www.bethge.org/?p=673#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:47:45 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[A modern-day Stone Age subculture is developing in the United States, where wannabe cavemen mimic their distant ancestors. They eat lots of meat, bathe in icy water and run around barefoot. Some researchers say people led healthier lives in pre-historic times. John Durant greets the hunter-gatherers of New York once a month in his apartment on the Upper East Side. They eat homemade beef jerky, huddle around the hearth and swap recipes for carpaccio with vegetables or roasted wild boar. Often enough, the host will deliberately skip a few meals the next day. After all, didn&#8217;t his earliest ancestors starve a little between hunts? Instead of eating, Durant prefers to run barefoot across Brooklyn Bridge. In the winter, he takes part in the Coney Island Polar Bear swim in the icy Atlantic. The 26-year-old and the other members of the New York group promoting what they term &#8220;Evolutionary Fitness&#8221; (EF) are part of a growing subculture that seeks health and happiness by emulating their Paleolithic forefathers. This diehard clan of modern-day cavemen call themselves &#8220;hunter-gatherers&#8221; or &#8220;paleos&#8221;. Their philosophy is based on the idea that the human body is best suited to the lifestyle of the people who roamed the [...]]]></description>
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		<title>The Twilight Saga: Duck-billed Platypuses are Shift Workers</title>
		<link>http://www.bethge.org/?p=587</link>
		<comments>http://www.bethge.org/?p=587#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:49:08 +0000</pubDate>
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		<category><![CDATA[platypus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[zoology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bethge.org/?p=587</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If you are a male duck-billed platypus, all that matters is what the other guys do. Strategies to handle the competition are far more variable then previously thought. In a new paper in the Journal of Mammalogy, Philip Bethge and colleagues from the University of Tasmanias&#8217; Department of Zoology report, that duck-billed platypuses use a variety of measures to avoid encounters with their peers, including the complex behavior of temporarily following the lunar cycle. This is even more true in the mating season when males try to bully their fellows in order to monopolize females. Bethge and fellow Zoologists Sarah Munks, Helen Otley and Stewart Nicol observed platypuses at Lake Lea, a subalpine lake in the remote Tasmanian Highlands. They equipped the animals with data-loggers recording their foraging activity for up to six weeks. Results show that platypuses are continuously foraging for up to 30 hour. Previous research shows that they constantly dive during this time with each dive lasting for approximately 30 seconds. Although most animals including dominant males were &#8211; as expected &#8211; active at nights, at least a third of them foraged during the day or in a very irregular manner. This was observed in particular in [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Chaos in the Doctor&#8217;s Office: Panic in Germany as Swine Flu Spreads</title>
		<link>http://www.bethge.org/?p=575</link>
		<comments>http://www.bethge.org/?p=575#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 14 Nov 2009 05:57:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>admin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Stories]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disease]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[medicine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.bethge.org/?p=575</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Fear of swine flu is running rampant in Germany as the number of reported cases &#8212; and deaths &#8212; continues to grow. Doctors&#8217; offices are inundated by people wanting to get the vaccine, which is in short supply. But health professionals are divided over how dangerous the virus really is. Death from swine flu comes unexpectedly, as was the case with six-year-old Kharra Skye Davis from Hot Springs, Arkansas, who spent 20 hours fighting for her life, and with Kyree James Gamble, 5, from Littlestown, Pennsylvania. Both were healthy children, and both lost their lives before they had truly begun. In the case of Kharra, who died in September, the cause of death was respiratory failure. The little girl had attended a birthday party, and by that evening she had a fever of 40.5 degrees Celsius (105 degrees Fahrenheit). Kharra quickly developed pneumonia, and by the next day &#8230; More Recommend on Facebook Tweet about it Tell a friend]]></description>
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