thegipples/science

"the green and the blue spirals are the same color"

Swine flu is still a threat, evidently.

From the page: "Scientists are trying to determine whether swine flu will mutate and become more deadly as it spreads to the Southern Hemisphere and back. The virus is more contagious than seasonal flu, the Geneva-based WHO said yesterday. A "moderate" pandemic like the 1957 Asian flu could kill 14.2 million people and shave 2 percent from the global economy in the first year, the World Bank said in October.

"While substantial uncertainty remains, clinical severity appears less than that seen in 1918 but comparable with that seen in 1957," the Science study authors wrote. "

From the page: "Scientists have found more evidence that the Indonesian "Hobbit" skeletons belong to a new species of human - and not modern pygmies.

The 3ft (one metre) tall, 30kg (65lbs) humans roamed the Indonesian island of Flores, perhaps up to 8,000 years ago."

From the page: "A new global arms race is escalating: the one to protect us from the mosquito"

From the page: "Google Voice allows users to route all their calls through a single number that can ring their home, work and mobile phones simultaneously. It also gives users a single and easy-to-manage voice mail system for multiple phone lines. And it lets users make calls, routed via the Internet, free in the United States and for a small fee internationally."

From Neander.

From the page: "Google is one of a number of companies devising ways to control the demand for electric power as an alternative to building more power plants. The company has developed a free Web service called PowerMeter that consumers can use to track energy use in their house or business as it is consumed.

Google is counting on others to build devices to feed data into PowerMeter technology. While it hopes to begin introducing the service in the next few months, it has not yet lined up hardware manufacturers.

...It also might be useful for plug-in hybrid cars, which will draw significant amounts of energy, perhaps doubling the electric demand of a small household. A smart grid would recognize the car wherever it was plugged in, the way a cellphone network recognizes a mobile phone when it is turned on.

The grid could bill the owner of the car for recharging the battery no matter where the car was plugged in.

...The stimulus bill now going to a House-Senate conference committee has allocated $4.4 billion for "smart" technologies, including four million of these next-generation monitors, called smart meters. Proponents say that could make more effective use of existing power lines and generate employment."