The hacker or hackers managed to gain password access to SLAC by intercepting the username and password of a registered user accessing data inside SLAC’s firewall. The random behaviour of the hackers inside the SLAC network suggests that they were trying to gain access to other government and university servers rather than access SLAC data. […]
The crossword puzzle was created using a software package developed by Lewis. The instructor simply types the clues and their answers into the program, which then creates the crossword grid. Although the students are given a hard copy of the puzzle, they have to enter their solutions over the Internet with a Java capable browser […]
Astronomers involved with the project hope to use a lightweight multi-segment design similar to the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) in Texas, which cost only about 20 per cent of what it would cost to build a traditional telescope of the same size. The HET board has agreed to make available the detailed plans for its telescope […]
In a process called electroencephalogram (EEG), brain activity is measured by strapping electrodes to the scalp. The electrodes record weak electrical waves produced from different parts of the brain and the results plotted on a graph. The algorithm that is widely used to study different states of consciousness (e.g., being asleep or awake) can also […]
In 1992 seven postgraduate students started their PhDs in the high-energy physics group at Imperial College, London. Six years later, three of them now work in international finance in the City of London. Although neither the research councils nor the financial sector keep records of how many physicists enter the City, it is clear that […]
The researchers constructed a mathematical representation of the irregularly spaced near Earth asteroid Castalia for their calculations. They assumed it would be made of solid rock, a pair of solid rocks separated by rubble, or a 50% porous agglomeration of large boulders. To simulate a collision they imagined a 8m diameter basalt sphere travelling at […]
Neutrinos come in three types – electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos – and only interact very weakly with matter, which makes them extremely difficult to detect. Neutrino detectors have to be built underground to isolate them from cosmic rays. Even then natural radioactivity from the detector itself can mimic a neutrino interaction, so […]
Recognising blood cells presents a big challenge for automated counting systems. As blood flows through veins, the cells are deformed in the direction of blood flow. Blood also contains a lot of other ‘junk’ material such as proteins. Computers find it difficult to recognise the cells once they have been deformed against this background ‘junk’ […]
The known universe consists almost entirely of matter. However, it is thought that equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created during the big bang. One possibility is that this antimatter now forms galaxies that lie beyond those detected from Earth. The AMS will try to detect minute quantities of antimatter in cosmic rays that […]
At the beginning of this century, before the advent of quantum mechanics, who could have foreseen molecular biology? And in the 1940s, before the discovery of DNA and the development of computers, who could have predicted the Human Genome Project and all of its staggering implications? The scientific exploration of the future is not a […]
