• Science

    Do Cells Make Noise?

    By Posted on 1.29.2008 3 Comments

    You have to listen very, very closely, but yes, cells produce a symphony of sounds. Although they wont win a Grammy anytime soon, the various audio blips produced by cells are giving scientists insight into cellular biomechanics and could even be used to help detect cancer.

    6.16.2009 at 08:21pm - Comment by hankjmatts

    Really an old post, but I really want to say something.... Your story says that animal cells such as human cells are floppy but they can still send back information when the researchers "blast human prostate cells with infrared light". I wonder if the cells survive. Still, frying a few hundred or thousand cells is preferable to cutting out a chunk of flesh to be studied in a lab. Matt - http://www.club-penguin.org/

  • Science

    Who Protects The Internet?

    By Posted on 4.2.2009 128 Comments

    For the past five years, John Rennie has braved the towering waves of the North Atlantic Ocean to keep your e-mail coming to you. As chief submersible engineer aboard the Wave Sentinel, part of the fleet operated by U.K.-based undersea installation and maintenance firm Global Marine Systems, Rennie--a congenial, 6'4", 57-year-old Scotsman--patrols the seas, dispatching a remotely operated submarine deep below the surface to repair undersea cables. The cables, thick as fire hoses and packed with fiber optics, run everywhere along the seafloor, ferrying phone and Web traffic from continent to continent at the speed of light. The cables regularly fail. On any given day, somewhere in the world there is the nautical equivalent of a hit and run when a cable is torn by fishing nets or sliced by dragging anchors. If the mishap occurs in the Irish Sea, the North Sea or the North Atlantic, Rennie comes in to splice the break together.

    6.16.2009 at 08:15pm - Comment by hankjmatts

    Your actulally quite right. The internet is a collection of networks not necissarily IP based. A majority of attacks exist on the IP side. Wide area networking technology carries all traffic regaurdless of the payload. If there is an attack on the border of your internal IP network the WAN cares not. If your border is penatrated and a connection is made to create another network, again the WAN doesn't care. Can the internet be taken down? Not if you have skilled and knowledgeable Information Security officers maintaining the network you reside on. http://www.club-penguin.org/



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December 2009: Best of What's New

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