At the 3D and Virtual Reality Exhibition, Global Wave presented their Pic3D sheet, which when applied to a regular LCD monitor transforms it into a glasses free 3D display.
As opposed to other films already on the market which use a parallax barrier to display the 3D image, Pic3D utilizes a lenticular lens system, Global Wave state that this method offers a light transmission level of 90%, and claim to have improved the field of view to 120°.
"We already announced this product for the iPad at the game show last year, and it was then used on a Fujitsu PC this spring, and now in the sheet form it can be used on all kinds of PCs and smartphones. We are now announcing 6 series of sheets and applications all at one time."
The sheets will be available for 12.1-inch, 21.5-inch and 23-inch monitors as well as for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, and the application is compatible with both Windows and iOS.
"Basically it will work with video files which are in the side by side format, and if you input URLs for side by side formatted content on sites such as YouTube, it will work with them too. Right now we plan to begin sales in early August, and at first we plan to sell it through our own direct sales website."
Prices will range from 2,000 yen for the iPhone version up to 15,000 yen for the 23-inch sheet.
Wood-burning stoves aren’t known for being particularly efficient, and their smoke not only contains high carbon emissions but causes health risks to those who inhale it. A portable design from BioLite aims to tackle this problem and turn the stove into a cell phone charger in the process.
The stove converts heat energy into electricity, powering a small fan to improve the wood’s combustion. Beyond this, one to two watts are available to charge a cell phone or LED light via a USB port.
The company sees two markets for their stove: Families in developing countries, and avid backpackers and campers. BioLite will release the CampStove version first, in spring of 2012. They hope profits from this product will help subsidize the cost of the HomeStove model for families in developing countries.
BioLite claims to require half the amount of wood as an open fire and to cut smoke emissions by as much as 95%. Because billions of people depend on wood as cooking fuel, the stove has potential to improve health and, perhaps, slightly curb deforestation.
The CampStove model weighs just under two pounds and boils a liter of water in less than four minutes. A variety of materials can be used to power it, including sticks, pine cones, dung, rice husks and underbrush. This could be convenient for campers tired of carrying cans of gas or petroleum to power their stoves.
BioLite has already won awards for its designs, including the St. Andrews Prize for the Environment and first place in the 2010 Sustainable Brands Innovation Open.
BioLite’s COO Jonathan den Hartog explains how the stove works:
All was quiet in the A's clubhouse Thursday night, but not because of a 6-0 loss to the Texas Rangers.
Players were visibly shaken after a fan sitting in the left-field bleachers died from injuries suffered in a 20-foot fall during the second inning at Rangers Ballpark.
The fan was later identified as Brownwood, Texas, firefighter Shannon Stone by several news sources.
Several A's relievers were in the visitors' bullpen located in left-center, not far from where the incident happened.
Oakland's Conor Jackson lined a foul ball into the left-field corner that ricocheted into fair territory. Rangers left fielder Josh Hamilton retrieved the ball and tossed it up to a male fan sitting
in the first row behind the out-of-town scoreboard that's built into the left-field wall.
The man lunged forward, and as he caught the ball with his bare hands, tumbled over a railing and fell headfirst to the concrete below.
The area where the man fell was behind the 14-foot-high scoreboard and out of sight from the field.
Shaken A's reliever Brad Ziegler, who was consoled by his family members outside the clubhouse after the game, said the man was conscious as he was taken out of the stadium.
"It was me and (Craig) Breslow and (Joey) Devine," Ziegler said while standing at his locker, his eyes still bloodshot. "They had him on a stretcher and were carrying him out. He was saying stuff, like, 'Please check on my son.' They had his arms splinted. You're just assuming he was (going to be OK) -- he was conscious and talking. To find out he's not is tough."
There was no break in game action, though Texas catcher Mike Napoli briefly motioned toward left field as it was apparent something had happened.
The man did have his son, a young boy, sitting next to him.
Ronnie Hargis, who was sitting next to Stone, said: "He went straight down. I tried to grab him, but I couldn't. I tried to slow him down a little bit."
A's manager Bob Melvin said the tragic news began circulating through the dugout as the game unfolded.
"When you think you've had a bad day, something like that puts things in perspective," Melvin said. "It's devastating. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family."
The tragedy happened one year and one day after another man fell over a railing from the second deck at Rangers Ballpark. That man suffered a fractured skull. He also was a firefighter.
More than 3,000 companies around the world sign up to Google Apps each day, according to a Google chief.
Robert Whiteside, head of Google enterprise for UK, Ireland and Benelux, said that around three million businesses across the world use Google Apps, one million of which are based in EMEA.
"We have over 3,000 companies a day moving into the cloud...[and] the adoption of cloud is accelerating," Whiteside said, although he admitted that a large proportion of the customers are small and medium-sized businesses.
Furthermore, not all of these companies pay for the service, which was first released in February 2007.
Businesses with up to 10 users can use the free version of Google Apps, called Standard Edition, while those with more users have to sign up to the paid-for Google Apps for Business. It costs firms £33 a year per user, or £3.30 per user on a monthly basis.
Google's major UK customers include Rentokil Initial, which deploys the apps to 35,000 employees, Jaguar Land Rover's 15,000 users and Specsavers's 2,500 staff. The Guardian and Telegraph newspapers each have around 2,000 employees using Google Apps.
Google Apps' low price point is one of its appealing features, which has helped encourage the growth in cloud computing adoption.
"We have really seen cloud computing go mainstream. One of the great values of cloud computing is it's very accessible," said Whiteside.
However, he said that cost should not be the deciding factor for businesses.
"Most companies are attracted to cloud computing initially because of its ability to reduce costs.
"The reality is that the model of cloud computing transforms your working practices, [allowing employees to] collaborate with each other, connecting staff in different ways. The cloud allows you to solve new business problems."
He continued: "The most successful companies will be the ones who use the cloud in new, innovative ways, in addition to running the cloud in their business."
It was a bit too soon, however, for Whiteside to say if Google's latest innovation, social network tool Google+, would be deployed for the enterprise market.
"Helping people share information among themselves is very important in the consumer and business world.
High school and university students staged a "Kiss in" outside the palaces of the city courts in Conception, Chile in response to Presient Pinera's announcement on new government policies for education on July 6, 2011. Thousands of students and teachers began protesting in cities across Chile in April, demanding improvements to the education system. UPI/Alipio Ortega
2,000 students filled the streets of Santaigo to offer a simple gesture — a kiss. Stephanie Garlow
To express their anger, hundreds of Chilean students made out in public.
Yesterday's mass makeout session — dubbed a "Kiss Party" — was part of ongoing protests against Chile's education system.
Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake split up back in March after dating for four years, but evidently they just couldn’t stay apart. Us Weekly reports that the pair are heating up the old soup.
The magazine’s source says:
“They have been talking the whole time and decided to give it another shot. Jessica really wanted to get back together with him and Justin realized single life is not what it’s cracked up to be… they’re just spending time together and taking things slowly.”
This is not entirely surprising, considering that just last month JT told Vanity Fair that Jessica was “the most special… most significant person in [his] life. When I read that, I had to wonder whether they were going to go another round. Well, good luck to them: I guess we’ll see if it’s meant to be after all.
SunHydro spend a lot of time talking about the possibilities for a large scale battery electric vehicle charging infrastructure, but what about hydrogen fuel cell vehicles? They're a little further out from commercialization--the first vehicles will hit the market in approximately 2014--but they offer plenty of advantages: quick filling time (it takes three minutes to fill up a car), a range of over 300 miles, and fuel prices that are comparable to gasoline (the equivalent of $2.50 per gallon). Solar-powered hydrogen fueling startup SunHydro has a simple plan to build out a hydrogen infrastructure before these cars become commercialized: stick fueling stations in ubiquitous oil change and quick lube stations across the U.S.
SunHydro and sister company Proton Energy Systems (the company that makes the hydrogen fueling equipment) have been in preliminary talks with the Automotive Oil Change Association about the potential to install fueling stations in some of the AOCA's 15,000 oil change and quick lube centers across the country.
The conversation began after the AOCA saw coverage of Proton's grand opening for its hydrogen fueling station in October of last year (Proton has been involved in 16 fueling stations, while SunHydro has one). The organization had been looking at alternative revenue streams, explains R. Scotti Lee, an AOCA board member. "Right now, it's just grassroots. We're starting to shake the trees, telling [AOCA members] that you don't have to get this set up for tomorrow, but start setting aside money and areas you can use for fueling."
Ultimately, the decision to install a hydrogen fueling station will be up to individual AOCA members. And while SunHydro and Proton would like to get started as soon as possible, there are no concrete business or branding plans yet. "[The stations] could be branded SunHydro, we could do co-branding with a particular fast lube owner, or we could put down Proton Hardware," says Mark Schiller, Proton's VP of business development.
Make no mistake: SunHydro and Proton don't have grand dreams of crushing the battery electric car revolution. "We think there is definitely a market opportunity for a mix of both [hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and EVs]. At the end of the day, they're both electric cars--one is a battery, one is hydrogen."
Developers today said they used a pair of unpatched vulnerabilities in Apple's iOS to "jailbreak" the iPhone and iPad, including the first-ever hack of the iPad 2.
Some security experts immediately said the unfixed flaw -- and the fact it's essentially been released into the wild for miscreants to exploit -- posed a danger to iPhone and iPad owners.
"If they exploited the same vulnerability in a copy-cat maneuver, cybercriminals could create booby-trapped webpages that could -- if visited by an unsuspecting iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad owner -- run code on visiting devices," warned Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant with U.K.-based Sophos, in a blog post .
"All eyes now turn to Apple to see how quickly it can secure its users," said Cluley. "Leaving a security hole like this open is simply inviting malicious hackers to exploit it."
"Jailbreaking" refers to hacking iOS to allow an iPhone or iPad to install software not sanctioned by Apple and not distributed through its official App Store channel.
To jailbreak an iOS device, users must visit the JailbreakMe website with an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch running the current version of iOS, then install JailbreakMe 3.0.
The hack was released by a team led by someone identified only as "comex," and is the latest in a string of exploits that have circumvented Apple's App Store-only model, including one issued by the same group last August, just weeks after Apple rolled out iOS 4.
Ten days after JailbreakMe 2.0's 2010 debut, Apple patched the two vulnerabilities used by comex.
Charlie Miller, the only person to win prizes four years running at the Pwn2Own hacking contest, and a principal research consultant for Denver-based Accuvant, said it was likely Apple would react quickly to the newest jailbreak.
"This one is a remote code executable vulnerability," said Miller of one of the two bugs exploited by JailbreakMe 3.0. "Apple will probably patch this in a couple of weeks at the most."
Like Cluley, Miller was concerned by the bugs and exploits. "They're certainly a threat, and would be easy to make malicious," he said.
Miller also noted that because comex released a patch for the vulnerabilities at the same time as JailbreakMe 3.0, the situation wasn't serious. "For anyone worried about security, they can jailbreak their iPhone and then apply the patch," Miller said.
Comex published the fix, dubbed "PDF Patcher 2," on the Cydia app store, a popular site for downloading applications that run only on jailbroken iOS devices.
"Due to the nature of iOS, this patch can only be installed on a jailbroken device," said comex in a short FAQ on JailbreakMe. "Until Apple releases an update, jailbreaking will ironically be the best way to remain secure."
Comex also dismissed concerns that others would exploit the vulnerabilities, noting that had not happened in 2010, something Miller confirmed.
"There's always a first time, but I think there's a good chance the security impact of these vulnerabilities will remain theoretical," comex wrote in the FAQ. "I did not create the vulnerabilities, only discover them. Although releasing a jailbreak is certainly not the usual way to report a vulnerability, it still has the effect of making iOS more secure in the long run."
Apple has not patched the bugs in the preliminary versions of iOS 5, the upgrade expected to launch alongside the next iPhone this fall, according to the iPhone Dev Team, another group of software developers who have created jailbreak tools. "But they'll almost certainly be fixed by the time iOS 5 is public," the team said on its own blog today.
Miller said the vulnerabilities used by JailbreakMe 3.0 were new to him.
"I was surprised" by the vulnerabilities and the ensuing exploits, said Miller, who with Dion Blazakis split a $15,000 prize at this year's Pwn2Own for hacking an iPhone.
"When Apple added ASLR [address space layout randomization] to iOS [4.3] in March, I thought we wouldn't see an exploit of it for a couple years."
JailbreakMe 3.0 exploits two separate vulnerabilities, said Miller, including one that circumvents ASLR, an anti-exploit technology designed to make it more difficult for attackers to predict available blocks of memory where they can execute their code.
One of the vulnerabilities is in iOS' font parsing code, and is exploitable via the PDF viewer built into the mobile version of Safari. The vulnerability does not exist in Mac OS X.
In an interview today and on Twitter , Miller called the JailbreakMe 3.0 hack "good work," "really slick" and "amazing."
Miller recommended that iOS device owners who jailbroke their iPhones, iPads or iPod Touches apply the PDF Patcher 2 fix immediately after hacking the operating system.
Sunburn is one of the summer's most enduring stings, leaving a sore, red, peeling patch long after the day's rays give way to cooler nights. Ointments and Aspirin can help soothe the sear. But the pain, part of the body's plea for shade and sunscreen, is inevitable.
That could change.
British researchers have discovered a molecule responsible for the persistent pain caused by sunburn, offering hope for a treatment that could one day block it.
"It wasn't known before that this protein was implicated in any kind of pain," said Stephen McMahon, professor of physiology at Guy's Medical School in London. "If you wanted a cure for sunburn pain, we may have found that."
The protein, called CXCL5, was elevated in painful sunburns. And blocking the protein's effects in a rat model of sunburn relieved the pain. The study was published today in Science Translational Medicine.
But McMahon, a long time pain researcher, thinks blocking sunburn pain is a bad idea.
"Pain plays a protective role," he said, explaining how the sensation alerts its victim to looming danger. "Stopping pain is not necessarily a good thing."
Sunburns are the body's response to ultraviolet radiation, which kills some skin cells and permanently damages the DNA of others, sometimes leading to skin cancer later on. In an attempt to save the damaged cells with oxygen and nutrients, the body pumps more blood to the skin, turning it red. And the swollen blood vessels ooze plasma, causing blisters.
"By the time you see your skin turning pink, it's almost too late," said Dr. Darrell Rigel, dermatologist at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. "The damage has already happened."
That damage, Rigel said, is impossible to undo.
"The best thing you can do is protect yourself from the sun," he said. "Wear a broad-brimmed hat, avoid being outside when the sun is at its strongest, and use sunscreen. We know those three things together lower sunburn risk and subsequently lower the risk of skin cancer."
But the sun is sneaky. And even those who protect themselves fall victim to the odd pink shoulders or red feet. Rigel shared these tips for beating the pain and protecting the tender skin after a getting burned:
Aspirin is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory that acts directly on chemicals known to play a role in sunburn pain. It will work better than acetaminophen.
The burn will release heat because of the increased blood flow. Sunburn creams that contain menthol will cool the skin.
Damaged skin loses its ability to retain water. Drink lots of water, and use a heavy moisturizer like Vaseline. Avoid using topical anesthetics or antihistamines, which can lead to reactions on the newly exposed, immature skin.
Normally it takes about 28 days for the cells at the base of the skin to work their way to the surface, where they die and are shed as individual cells. But when that process is packed into fewer days by a burn, the cells have less time to separate from their neighbors, and tend to come off in sheets. Let this happen naturally. Peeling the skin can leave a scar, and can even lead to an infection.
If you have a blistering sunburn, you should stay out of sun for a week. The skin is already damaged and more sun will make it worse. If you have to go out, wear a hat and protective clothing. The best protection comes from fabric that is wooly, dark and a tight weave -- not ideal for 90 degree heat. But new synthetic fabrics are light weight, quick to dry and offer up to 50 SPF.
The tops of the feet, shoulders, nose and ears are the body parts most often missed during sunscreen slathering.
Google on Tuesday unveiled Swiffy, a free tool for developers to convert some Flash files (.SWFs) into HTML5 code. The upshot? It’s now easier than ever to get Flash content visible on platforms that don’t support Adobe’s Flash Player—like the iPhone and iPad.
Swiffy works by converting Flash content into HTML5, relying on advanced browser support for technologies like Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), coupled with CSS3 and JSON. For now, that means that Swiffy-converted files will work in modern WebKit browsers like Safari and Chrome—as well as Mobile Safari—but browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox, which rely on different rendering engines, may have trouble.
Google calls Tuesday’s release “an early version,” and the tool can’t yet convert heavily interactive Flash content (like advanced games). However, Swiffy apparently works very well with animations and advertisements, so iOS device owners can, um, look forward to seeing more of those soon. To Google’s credit, its small Swiffy gallery does include a couple of bare-bones games in addition to a pair of converted Flash advertisements.
Adobe has long bemoaned the lack of Flash support on Apple’s iOS devices. Last year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously penned some public thoughts on Flash, which he faulted for being closed, slow, and battery-draining. At that time, Jobs wrote “Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”
This past March, Adobe heeded Jobs’s advice, releasing Wallaby, its own Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool. Like Swiffy, Adobe’s converter relies on SVG and CSS3 to work its magic. When it released Wallaby, Adobe said the tool was focused on simple banner ads and other animations. Google’s stated goals for Swiffy are thus far a bit loftier, but only time will tell if Swiffy will sweep Wallaby under the rug.
Every pilot faces uncertain weather, rising costs, and ground transportation hassles on each end of the flight. The Transition® combines the unique convenience of being able to fold its wings with the ability to drive on any surface road in a modern personal airplane platform. Stowing the wings for road use and deploying them for flight at the airport is activated from inside the cockpit. This unique functionality addresses head-on the issues faced by today’s Private and Sport Pilots.
Terrafugia, Inc., developer of the Transition® Roadable Aircraft officially received a grant of all of the special exemptions it had requested from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Terrafugia’s Transition® is the first combined flying-driving vehicle to receive such special consideration from the Department of Transportation since the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards came into being in the 1970s.
These exemptions pave the way for Terrafugia to begin deliveries once Terrafugia’s rigorous Transition® certification testing program is complete. Extensive analysis and simulated crash testing are also being employed with industry partners to ensure that the Transition® meets all other applicable crash safety standards. The Transition® is the only light airplane to have undergone this high level of crash safety design and analysis. It is also the first to incorporate automotive safety features such as a purpose-built energy absorbing crumple zone, a rigid carbon fiber occupant safety cage, and automotive-style driver and passenger airbags.
These exemptions allow the Transition® to use tires that are appropriately rated for highway speeds and the vehicle weight but are not ordinarily allowable for multi-purpose vehicles. The same tires were used successfully on the Transition® Proof of Concept that was flight and drive tested in 2009.
Traditional laminated automotive safety glass would add significant weight to the Transition® and could fracture in such a way as to obscure the vision of the pilot in the event of a bird impact. This exemption allows the use of polycarbonate materials that provide comparable protection to the occupants at significant weight-saving without shattering or crazing – improving the safety of the Transition®.
In the exemption text, NHTSA states: “We further conclude that the granting of an exemption from these requirements would be in the public interest and consistent with the objectives of traffic safety.”
In 2010, the Transition® was granted an additional 110 pounds allowance by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in a prior exemption action by the DOT.
Terrafugia’s award-winning MIT-trained engineers have been advancing the state-of-the-art in personal aircraft since 2006. Now you can streamline your flying experience with the revolutionary integration of personal land and air travel made possible by the Transition® Roadable Aircraft.
Sony is planning a redesign of its online gaming network, the PlayStation Network (PSN), following a hacking attack that brought the network down for nearly a month, according to reports.
The original layout for the PSN and the PlayStation store was heavy in text and had a lot of information on the screen. The new look is more streamlined, with bigger images and more accessible information, according to the report. It will be similar to the streamlined design of Microsoft’s online gaming network, Xbox Live.
Sony’s online network is a critical service that competes with Microsoft’s Xbox Live online gaming service among others. There are also 948 games now available in the PlayStation Network store, as well as 4,000 pieces of add-on content for games.
Sony’s PSN was offline for 24 days in the United States, and longer in other countries. The company took the PSN down after hackers were able to break in and steal sensitive information about more than 100 million customers. Sony laid indirect blame for the PSN’s downtime on hacktivist group Anonymous, which typically rallies a group of loosely connected hackers under moral or political banners.
PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable owners were unable to download new content for their games and play online with other players. The downtime came at a critical time for two major releases — Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat, both of which prominently featured online play and had received a good deal of critical acclaim.
Sony offered PSN users free games and a whole batch of other welcome-back goodies — like free subscriptions to the company’s premium PlayStation Plus version of the PSN — to entice players to continue using the PSN. The packages will probably appease a large number of console and handheld gaming device owners. But a lot of gamers — myself included — already own those Triple-A titles, and find they aren’t really worth as much as they used to be.
You've been filling up your car with corn, beats and sugar cane. Why not kelp? New research finds that summer kelp, rich with energy-dense carbohydrates and soluble sugars, may offer a new source of biofuel. While most bioenergy efforts have focused on terrestrial plants, marine ecosystems are a virtually untapped resource that represents a significant fraction of the world's biomass.
Researcher Jessica Adams at Aberystwyth University sampled the chemical composition of kelp forests in the U.K., finding that summer conditions boosted energy yields from fermentation (ethanol), anaerobic digestion (methane) or pyrolysis (bio-oil). Her research, she said, suggests "seaweed biofuel could be very important in future energy production" at a meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology in Scotland.
The need for sustainable biofuel is acute: diverting crops such as corn from plates to biofuel refineries drove up the price of food worldwide forcing an additional 100 million into chronic hunger. Beyond this humanitarian crisis, it's also an energy challenge. There is simply not enough food and fuel to substantially lower prices given mandates for European and U.S. biofuel consumption and razor thin crop surpluses. We have little choice but to find new biofuel feedstocks (or cut back altogether), or else decide that millions in the developing world will face hunger so those in the industralized world can substitute biofuels for petroleum.
That's what makes marine plants so attractive. Since seaweed and algae hold the promise of scaling biofuel production without gobbling up food crops or arable land, it's perhaps the only feedstock that can satisfy the world's demand for transportation fuels. Kelp is a good prospect. The prolific plant--a more efficient photosynthesiser than land-based plants, like most seaweed--can grow a foot per week, and already covers vast areas of ocean bottom from Ecuador to Iceland.
The market isn't waiting for full commercial production to begin burning biofuels. Airlines, pressured by European governments to lower their greenhouse gas pollution, are already flying biofuel-powered flights, and have won approval to fill their tanks with a fuel mix of 50 percent plant-derived biofuel. The military, wary of its dependence on billions of gallons of fossil fuels each year, has flown test flights in its MH-60S Seahawk helicopter and F/A-18 Super Hornet with more biofuel on order.
But seaweed is not quite ready for your gas tank. Cost and supply remain major barriers: the price of the military biofuel contracts ranged from $67 to $424 per gallon once R&D costs are included, and despite millions of dollars flowing into startups during the last decade, mass commercial production is still on the horizon. For kelp, new chemical enzymes and growing techniques will be needed before achieving necessary scale. One study estimated the cost of raw materials needed to drop 75% from today's levels before kelp would become commercially viable.
Still, pilot projects are advancing. Chile, Scandinavia, and Scotland have embarked on research and public-private partnerships to commercialize kelp for biofuel, while U.S. startups are busy hooking up tanks of the algae to the carbon dioxide-rich exhaust of power plants to grow biofuel. Since almost any plant material can be used as a feedstock to supply the multi-billion dollar biofuel industry, the best source will have to be scalable, affordable, and sustainable. The race is on, and kelp may quickly come from behind.
China's monopoly over rare-earth metals could be challenged by the discovery of massive deposits of these hi-tech minerals in mud on the Pacific floor, a study on Sunday suggests.
China accounts for 97 percent of the world's production of 17 rare-earth elements, which are essential for electric cars, flat-screen TVs, iPods, superconducting magnets, lasers, missiles, night-vision goggles, wind turbines and many other advanced products.
These elements carry exotic names such as neodymium, promethium and yttrium but in spite of their "rare-earth" tag are in fact abundant in the planet's crust.
The problem, though, is that land deposits of them are thin and scattered around, so sites which are commercially exploitable or not subject to tough environment restrictions are few.
As a result, the 17 elements have sometimes been dubbed "21st-century gold" for their rarity and value.
Production of them is almost entirely based in China, which also has a third of the world's reserves. Another third is held together by former Soviet republics, the United States and Australia.
But a new study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, points to an extraordinary concentration of rare-earth elements in thick mud at great depths on the Pacific floor.
Japanese geologists studied samples from 78 sites covering a major portion of the central-eastern Pacific between 120 and 180 degrees longitude.
Drills extracted sedimentary cores to depths that in place were more than 50 meters (165 feet) below the sea bed.
More than 2,000 of these cores were chemically tested for content in rare-earth elements.
The scientists found rich deposits in samples taken more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) from the Pacific's mid-ocean ridges.
The material had taken hundreds of millions of years to accumulate, depositing at the rate of less than half a centimeter (0.2 of an inch) per thousand years. They were probably snared by action with a hydrothermal mineral called phillipsite.
At one site in the central North Pacific, an area of just one square kilometer (0.4 of a square mile) could meet a fifth of the world's annual consumption of rare metals and yttrium, says the paper.
Lab tests show the deposits can be simply removed by rinsing the mud with diluted acids, a process that takes only a couple of hours and, say the authors, would not have any environmental impact so long as the acids are not dumped in the ocean.
A bigger question is whether the technology exists for recovering the mud at such great depths -- 4,000 to 5,000 meters (13,000 to 16,250 feet) -- and, if so, whether this would be commercially viable.
In an email exchange with AFP, lead author Yasuhiro Kato, a professor of economic geology and geochemistry at the University of Tokyo, said the response from mining companies was as yet unknown, "because nobody knows the presence of the (rare-earth) -rich mud that we have discovered."
"I am not an engineer, just a geoscientist," Kato said. "But about 30 years ago, a German mining company succeeded in recovering deep-sea mud from the Red Sea. So I believe positively that our deep-sea mud is technologically developable as a mineral resource."
The market for rare-earth elements has tightened considerably over the last couple of years.
China has slashed export quotas, consolidated the industry and announced plans to build national reserves, citing environmental concerns and domestic demand.
These moves led to a fall of 9.3 percent in China's exports of rare-earth metals last year, triggering complaints abroad of strategic hoarding and price-gouging.
The World Trade Organisation ruled today against China's export restrictions on raw materials, including bauxite, coking coal, fluorspar, magnesium, manganese, silicon metal, silicon carbide, yellow phosphorus and zinc.
With just a few hours left in the day, it's nearly safe to say that Victoria Beckham will not be having her baby girl today, July 4th, as it had long been rumored. July 4th is, however, Victoria and David Beckham's 12th wedding anniversary and it had been said that the former Spice Girl had booked a caesarean section for the national holiday. Her representative has now come out and called the rumors "rubbish."
The Beckhams' spokesman said:
"The rumors are rubbish, Victoria has not had the baby but she will be giving birth soon."
David Beckham's publicist, Simon Oliveira, also addressed the rumors, saying:
"Contrary to certain reports, David and Victoria Beckham's baby is not due today and that was never the case."
The Beckhams' confirmed their latest pregnancy in a statement to People magazine in January, and several months later found out that they were expecting a girl, after having three boys already.
While Victoria isn't having her baby today (at least, not planned), she is said to be having the baby "soon."
Getting shot at by Taliban fighters and need to call an air strike? There's an app for that.
Tactical Nav can be downloaded to a smartphone to figure out where an enemy is firing from, and to call in an air strike or covering fire.
It was created by US army captain Jonathan Springer after two of his comrades were killed in a rocket attack.
He says it is as accurate as any technology currently in use for the same purpose, and far cheaper too.
Captain Springer is back in his Indiana home after a 12-month tour in Afghanistan with the 101st Airborne.
'Died instantly'
Over a beer, he remembers fallen comrades - and two in particular.
"Specialist Plunk and Specialist Thompson. We were in the Pesh River Valley. They took a rocket. Died instantly."
Those deaths, he said, got him thinking.
"What can I do to help prevent something like this in future?"
His answer was to create the Tactical Nav app, which troops can download to their smartphones.
"It combines three components," he said.
"A compass, a map, and a camera. It's pretty simple - but obviously it does a little more than that."
He said he's tested his app against everything currently in use in Afghanistan - and claimed it is just as accurate.
The app is designed to give soldiers exact co-ordinates for where enemy fire is coming from.
They can then send that information to their command centre, who will decide whether to call in an air strike, or send a rescue helicopter to help wounded troops.
"The first time I tried it for real," he said, "I sighed with relief.
"I could have got into trouble - but it worked.
"As a fire support officer, I take into battle a compass, binoculars, a map, a protractor, a GPS device - a secondary GPS device in case one fails - and batteries.
"What this does is, it combines all these components, and throws it into just the one app," he said.
'Soldier's lives'
But Captain Springer said he'd been disappointed that his US army bosses hadn't taken more of an interest in the idea.
He said he had spent about £20,000 (more than $30,000) of his own money - and that he asked the military for financial support.
"I emailed the army saying, 'I'm not looking for a pay-cheque, but are there any kind of grants or anything you can help me with?'
"They said, 'sorry, we don't have the funds right now'."
Captain Springer said he was "very frustrated" by that response. He called it "a slap in the face".
"It really hurts because I'm doing something for the troops. But it just motivates me to continue."
The US military didn't respond when Newsbeat asked them for a comment.
In the UK, the Ministry of Defence says it's "actively exploring" ways to use smartphones in recruitment and training, as well as on the battlefield.
Now, Captain Springer is selling his app to anyone that wants it - on the iPhone's app store.
For extraterrestrials notoriously shy about making their presence known to Earthlings, they have been making more and more appearances in home videos over the past six months.
One of the most famous was the UFO that appeared over the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem, on January 28. Discovery News writer Ian O’Neill published one of the first analyses of the video (based in part on my own investigation), demonstrating that it was "almost certainly a hoax."
A more comprehensive analysis by the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), one of the oldest, largest, and most respected UFO investigation organizations in the world, also later concluded that it was faked.
A few months later, on April 21, another 'alien' home video surfaced. This one, allegedly taken in Russia, showed two young men finding an alien body on a rural, snowy farm. It, too, was soon revealed to be a hoax.
The video, one of at least two similar videos, was posted to YouTube last week and soon went viral over the Web, stirring interest and controversy among believers and skeptics alike.
Though evidence may eventually validate the video, a preliminary analysis strongly suggests that this video, like the others, is a hoax. For one thing, it's not clear who shot the video, or even when; anonymous eyewitnesses are a red flag.
Furthermore, the UFOs (like the one that appeared in the hoaxed Jerusalem video) are very easy to fake with video-editing software, mere spots of light without structure or detail.
Adding fuel for the skeptical grist, it seems that no one else on the busy London street near the British Broadcasting Building saw the many bright glowing objects in the sky. Logic suggests that there would have been thousands of eyewitnesses, yet the cameraman captured an event that apparently no one else saw.
It's also suspicious that though the video shows others recording the amazing event, no other photos or videos from the same angle have surfaced. Surely one of the other UFO eyewitnesses present (and seen in the video) would have come forward in the past weeks to sell their own photographs or videos to a newspaper or television station -- perhaps the BBC would be interested, since it occurred above their building.
Faked UFO videos may be fun for hoaxers (or as viral marketing), but even many people firmly convinced that UFOs are real are getting tired of the hoaxes. After all, how will we know when the real UFO videos surface? No one likes to be fooled, and the best preventative is to examine all the evidence with a sense of history and a skeptical eye.
Maria Shriver stood by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he ran for California's governorship in 2003, even after several women accused him of lecherous behavior.
On Friday, 25 years after their fairytale wedding on Cape Cod, she filed for divorce.
The former television journalist and Kennedy family heiress cited irreconcilable differences but offered no additional details about the breakup.
Shriver did not list a date when the couple separated, although they announced they had done so on May 9.
A week later, the former California governor admitted he fathered a child with a member of his household staff years ago.
The filing, which Shriver signed nearly two weeks ago, signals an end to a union that brought together a rising film action star and a princess of the Kennedy clan, herself an up-and-coming network newscaster.
Shriver's filing does not indicate the couple had a premarital agreement.
That means Schwarzenegger's earnings from a career as a Hollywood megastar, which allowed him to forgo a salary as governor and commute by private jet to Sacramento, likely will be evenly divided with his estranged wife.
Shriver is seeking spousal support but the amount will be determined later, either through a settlement or by a judge. The divorce is expected to be handled mostly behind closed doors.
Economic disclosure forms filed when Schwarzenegger left as California governor in January show he has interests in at least eight entities each worth $1 million or more. An exact tally of his wealth is impossible to calculate.
The forms also show he still retains rights to intellectual property from his days as a fitness guru and movie star.
Several of Schwarzenegger's biggest hits, including "Predator," "True Lies" and the blockbuster sequel "Terminator 2" were made during his marriage to Shriver.
Shriver was an award-winning television journalist but put her career on hold when Schwarzenegger ran for governor.
Her holdings are more modest but are listed in the disclosure as being worth more than $1 million. She is a member of the Kennedy family and a beneficiary of some of its assets in addition to owning rights and royalties from her work as an author, the filings show.
In recent months, she has appeared in videos posted on YouTube in which she talks about stress in her life, the weight of expectations and the search for faith in a troubled world.
Shriver and Schwarzenegger have four children together, including two sons who are still minors. Shriver's petition seeks joint custody of the teens, who are 17 and 13.
Schwarzenegger's spokesman Adam Mendelsohn declined comment in an email. Shriver's attorney Laura Wasser did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment. Her spokesman Matthew DiGirolamo declined comment.
Shriver publicly supported her husband when he ran for elected office, even after the Los Angeles Times reported accusations by several women that they had been groped by the movie star.
Schwarzenegger said he "behaved badly sometimes" and was twice elected to the governorship.
He failed to fix the state's chronic budget problems and left office in January with an eye toward environmental projects and a return to the big screen.
One of his projects was an animated collaboration with comic book legend Stan Lee titled "The Governator," but the project was shelved after Schwarzenegger admitted fathering the child out of wedlock. He has disappeared from the public eye in recent weeks and has not announced any plans to resume acting.
In the American holiday calendar no day is more significant than the Fourth of July, in which we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. That Declaration proclaimed to the world our separation from Great Britain and our emergence as a new sovereign nation, as we state in the pledge to our flag, "under God, with liberty and justice for all."
The Declaration stated unequivocally: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed."
Those few words sum up the divine source of our unalienable rights and our philosophy of government. Nothing quite so revolutionary had been proclaimed anywhere by any people. But those beliefs had to be affirmed by a long, bloody war, which was finally won. The result has been this shining light on a hill, the United States of America, the freest, most creative, productive, and richest nation in the history of mankind.
The Beginning of the End for Slavery
Today, the Declaration of Independence is celebrated as the centerpiece of American political philosophy. It clearly spells out the purpose of government, which is to secure our God-given unalienable rights. A government limited by its basic purpose does not need to incur a back-breaking debt of trillions of dollars. Our legislators have obviously forgotten what is written in the Declaration.
But what about slavery, you might ask? Why didn't the liberty-loving Declaration also abolish slavery? First, the Declaration was not a set of laws. It was a statement of principles... and its principles clearly were anti-slavery. However, they could only be implemented after winning a long, bloody war. Also, at the time the Declaration was written, indentured servitude and slavery were centuries-old worldwide practices that could not be done away with overnight. The truth is that the Declaration did serve as the basis on which slavery was finally abolished in the United States, for it was the Declaration that Lincoln insisted on using in his argument for abolishing what the great Southern statesman Henry Clay called "a foul blot upon our nation."
In the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, Lincoln declared:
There is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...
It should be noted that even though Lincoln abhorred slavery, he was still not ready to accept total social equality. In 1858 most Americans shared Lincoln's views. Maine was the only state in the Union where African-Americans could vote or hold public office. It took the horrible ordeal of the Civil War to speed up the cause of social equality for the ex-slaves. And it took another hundred years to finally get rid of racial segregation. But the leaven of the Declaration's "self-evident truths" finally did work its way so that "all men" could be free.
The Soul of America
It is interesting that we do not widely celebrate Constitution Day, although the United States Constitution provides the legal framework of our form of representative government. The aim of the framers of the Constitution was to make it as difficult as possible for any person or group of persons to establish a despotic regime over the people of this country. They therefore broke up the government into three branches -— Executive, Legislative, and Judicial -— in order to disperse power as widely as possible. And they divided the legislature into two bodies: the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The House of Representatives, representing local Congressional districts, brought the citizen as close to the seat of government as possible. The large states, with their larger number of delegates, could exert power over the smaller states. However, in the Senate the smaller states could exert power over the larger ones. In the Senate, little Rhode Island or Delaware has as much clout as California or New York.
What an ingenious plan to limit the power of government over a free people! And yet we have Time magazine, the voice of the liberal elite, advocating the shredding of the United States Constitution because it is an obstacle to total government.
During the last century, many in the cultural and political elite have favored socialism, a political and economic doctrine contrary to the political beliefs of our Founding Fathers. With this powerful liberal elite pushing for government control over every area of our lives, for over 100 years, how have we managed to retain so many of our freedoms... and even exercise the almost lost freedom to homeschool? It's largely owing to the appetite for freedom still spread by the ringing words of the Declaration of Independence.
Yet, the New World Order socialists would prefer that we write a new Declaration of Interdependence, and joyfully accept the chains of statist tyranny.
But that is why we must celebrate the Fourth of July -— Independence Day -— with all the fervor and joy that the American people can muster. We do so to inform our would-be masters that we are not interested in the collectivist utopia based on atheistic Marxism they wish to impose on us. And that is why we humbly thank the men who gave us our Declaration of Independence, which will remain for future generations of Americans the beacon of liberty, the upholder of our divine unalienable rights, the guardian of our independence. Its words must be written in the hearts and minds of our citizens, so that we never forget the price paid for our freedom... and the reasons why freedom is worth paying the price.
