Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Astronomers have declared that they have discovered the first planet to have originated outside of our galaxy.

Once a part of a dwarf galaxy which was consumed by our Milky Way galaxy, the planet is deemed to be very similar to Jupiter and discovered by scientists in Chile.

Named HIP 13044 and just 2000 light years from earth, the star at the centre of its solar system is reaching the end of its lifespan.

Hundreds of “exoplanets” outside our solar system have been discovered by astronomers, but this is the first to have originated from outside our galaxy.

The star belonged to a group of stars within the “Helmi stream” which is known to have began outside of our Milky Way galaxy, but merged approximately six to nine billion years ago.

Located in the southern constellation Fornax, the planet is approximately 1.25 times the mass of Jupiter, and has a short orbit period of just over 16 days.

Rainer Klement from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany has been working on the project, and is upbeat about the developments.

“This discovery is very exciting,” he said.

“For the first time, astronomers have detected a planetary system in a stellar stream of extragalactic origin. This cosmic merger has brought an extragalactic planet within our reach.”

The UK’s Royal Astronomical Society’s Dr Robert Massey feels that this is a great step forward.

“There’s every reason to believe that planets are really quite widespread throughout the Universe, not just in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, but also in the thousands of millions of others there are,” Dr Massey explained.

“But this is the first time we’ve got hard evidence of that.”

The discovery may give us a great insight into our own solar system’s dying years.

Despite having an orbit so close to HIP 13044, the newly discovered planet has yet to be consumed by the expanding red giant.

Dr Johny Setiawan, leader of the study at the Max Planck Institute, is interested in how the information can be applied to our own situation.

“This discovery is particularly intriguing when we consider the distant future of our own planetary system, as the Sun is also expected to become a red giant in about five billion years,” he explained.

“The star is rotating relatively quickly.

“One explanation is that HIP 13044 swallowed its inner planets during the red giant phase, which would make the star spin more quickly.”

Know what you’re doing!

You can get some great deals when buying stuff online, especially when money is tight in a recession, but how do you know that you’re being safe when grabbing a bargain?  There are a few tips to know when buying online…

•    The website you are looking at might be very professional but that doesn’t necessarily mean everything will be alright – make some checks and do your research before you hand over your card details.

•    Make yourself aware of the trader’s complete address – if something goes wrong then you won’t be left with an email address as the only way of communicating with the business.

•    Know your rights – If the company you are buying from is based abroad then you should make sure that you have the same rights as you would if you had bought from a UK based company.

•    Make sure you check exactly where the company is based – just because the web address ends in “.co.uk” doesn’t make it a British business.  Find the physical address so you can be sure.

•    Don’t forget about the postage and packaging charges as they’ll often b stuck on quietly at the end of the process. Find out what the businesses charges are and work out how much you will be paying before you find out too late.

•    Use websites that provide a secure way of paying – you can identify websites that provide these encryption facilities as there will be a little padlock at the bottom of the screen which you can find when you’re filling out the necessary forms.

•    Make sure you know what the company you are buying from will do with your information – you don’t want to discover that your credit card numbers are being used abroad because the company you used didn’t guarantee your privacy.

There are a few things that you need to look out for when buying online.  Make sure you keep the following standards in mind when doing your online shopping;

•    The business should protect your privacy – if they don’t say that they do then you would be safer to find another site.

•    Secure payments are a necessity – you don’t want to wind up losing thousands of pounds because the online company you used didn’t secure your payment.

•    Make sure the site informs you exactly what contract you have entered into by purchasing from the business. Don’t be kept in the dark – you should be aware of everything that is going on.

•    You need to be aware of exactly how to cancel an order if necessary – find out before you purchase in case you decide you want to cancel and then find out that you can’t.

•    You should be told how long you would be expected to wait for your delivery before you purchase – you could spend a lot of money buying a product and once the money has gone you could be told that you’ll receive the delivery in 2 months – gutted!

What about you?

Have you found our advice helpful?  Leave us a comment and let us know what you think…

Yesterday we sparked the debate that is raging on through the streets of all the major cities around the world – paper books vs Ebooks!  We looked at the paper book’s argument and although it had some good points it’s time to give Ebooks a chance to speak out…

Ebook argument;

Pros

•    Easy to read – you can zoom about, move the page about and do a lot of funky stuff with the electronic page.  It’s basically a tool to help you to read so you can imagine that you can do pretty much anything with it to do with reading…they do say that technology is supposed to make our lives easier.

•    Even more portable than a book – if you thought a book was portable then you really have no idea how much you will love carrying an Ebook around.  An Ebook is made up of 1s and 0s and you can fit hundreds in your pocket – obviously there’s no way to know what size reader you have but if you have a relatively small one then you could be carrying all the books you could want in your pocket!

•    Think about the trees! – there are no poor trees being knocked down to provide the paper for you to read off…by backing Ebooks you will be doing something great for the environment which could save you getting a cup of green “custard” thrown in your face…

•    Make note – unlike paper books you can make notes on Ebooks and you don’t have to worry about ruining the book for the rest of time.

Cons

•    My eyes… - Did your mum ever tell you that watching television for too long will make your eyes go square?  Reading an Ebook can be quite difficult on the eyes – you may find you will  need to take breaks to rest your eyes and that isn’t something that you want to factor into your reading time.

•    Where’s the power? – with a paper book there isn’t that nagging issue of battery usage.  With an Ebook you will be constantly worried about how much longer your battery will last and if you will reach page 314 in time – STRESS!

•    Portability is an issue again – Some people read Ebooks on their laptops…would you rather carry around a paper book or a laptop?  Spilling coffee onto a book can be annoying…spilling coffee onto your laptop can ruin your week!

•    Where are they – There is always the issue that they aren’t readily available, unlike paper books.  Where are they being sold?  Ebooks aren’t exactly taking off like the mighty DVD so for the Ebook to be successful they need to start appearing in more places otherwise just forget it!

So what shall we do? I vote that we should stick with our traditional paper books and leave Ebooks to the bargain bin of the Internet – I don’t think anything can beat reading a book by an open fire with a cup of hot chocolate – technology can’t really make up for tradition in this case.

Maybe you don’t agree – I’m sure not everyone does!  Let us know what you think about the debate and which format you are backing…

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A young man who lost his left hand in a car accident has been given a new lease of life after being fitted with an award winning bionic arm.

Sports biology student at University of the West of England, Evan Reynolds, 19, is only the second person in the country to be given the £30,000 “i-Limb” hand which is controlled by electronic muscle signals from the remaining part of the limb.

The innovative prosthetic has five independently powered digits which operate like a human hand when closing around an object.

“It’s the hundreds of everyday things you take for granted, which I can do again, like peeling a potato, catching a ball, holding a bottle of water,” he said

The rugby playing student had dreams of joining the Army and going to Sandhurst but was dealt a cruel blow when his friend who was driving the car scraped a wooden post as they drove out of a car park – Reynolds had his hand hanging out of the window at the time and lost it instantly. Luckily his friend thought fast and applied a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

He said: “It was very nasty. It was amputated in a second…obviously I couldn’t join the Army any more”

The i-Limb was developed by a Scottish company called Touch Bionics. The i-Limb has scooped awards for innovation, as Time magazine named it one of the top 50 inventions of 2008.

Mr Reynolds older brother saw a television report about the hand so contacted the company. The firm only had a prototype at that time, but Reynolds was fitted with the new hand in February last year.

He said: “The most amazing thing about it was how quickly I adapted to it. People always ask how it’s changed my life, but there’s no specific thing.

“I’m incredibly grateful.”

He added: “It’s so sensitive I can grip a bottle of water or a paper cup without crushing it, and even swing a racket. All I have to so is imagine picking something up or gripping it and the fingers and thumb move automatically.”

He said: “I love sport, I still play rugby, I still play squash, but I take the i-LIMB off first.”

Touch Bionics won the Limbless Association’s Prosthetic Product Innovation Award for 2008 for the product, and American soldiers injured in action are among those who have been given it.

Well I’m still alive. (To this point anyway)

With the switching on of the worlds first “Large Hadron Collider Atom Smasher” at around 9-ish this morning, doomsayers claimed ‘the end is nigh’ with one German scientist claiming the world would “eat itself”. Brilliant.

Well happily the world has not ate itself, as fun as it may sound, it is probably as difficult as licking your elbow or watching a person trying to eat their own head.

There is a reason for all this we’ve been reliably informed…Physicists hope to learn more about the origins of mass, gravity and mysterious dark matter - or the “glue” that holds the universe together.

Sound pretty cool, and I’m sure the nerds of the world are falling all over themselves at the thought that we could discover how it all began.

In my office, however, we were more keen on the idea that this would somehow create an new tiny universe that people would pay £10 for 30 seconds of viewing time through a telescope, like a real-time Google Earth.

Imagine if you could watch this new world develop though the ages, sure we’d all be dead but I mean its still pretty cool…unless, scientists discover a way of speeding up the evolutionary process.

We could watch them make the same mistakes as us; wars, genocides, nuclear bombs, and the Fiat Panda.

But, I think my dreams of a tiny world; with Steven Hawking as its god, may not come true. But what could happen is that the legendary theoretical genius would finally get his hands on a Nobel Prize, which is well deserved.

The feat of engineering is astounding, but after the $500bn that it’s taken to build will it actually do some good for the world?

The British hacker, Gary McKinnon?s legal team have said they will take their fight against his extradition all the way to the European Court of Human Rights on Monday, as the high court in England begins deliberation on whether to send him to the US authorities. The judgement on this latest appeal will take around two weeks.

Five Law Lords heard McKinnons? barrister, David Pannick QC, claim that the US had abused the process, by attempting to strong arm his client into accepting extradition and pleading guilty.

Pannick told the hearing: “If the United States wish to use the processes of English courts to secure the extradition of an alleged offender then they must play by our rules.”

It has emerged that in exchange for compliance, US prosecutors offered to withdraw a threat to block any application for McKinnon to be repatriated to serve most of his time in a UK jail. This is central to his lawyers claim.

If accepted, the bargain would reduce his sentence from eight to ten years, to three to four years. Combined with the UK parole system, he may only have to spend two years in prison.

In her evidence, McKinnon’s solicitor Karen Todner said that in their correspondence the US had told her that failure to play ball would mean “all bets were off” and that repatriation to the UK “would not occur”. This threat, charged McKinnon’s team, “sought to impose pressure to accept extradition and plead guilty”, and represented an unlawful abuse of the court process that was “disproportionate [and] reprehensible”.

Prosecutors exaggerated their influence over the repatriation process, said Pannick, and in a bid to secure McKinnon’s co-operation, and that had “made it all the worse”. Edward Fitzgerald QC, who provided supporting intervention at the hearing on behalf of the civil liberties charity Liberty, said: “What the prosecution [was] saying is ‘I have immense powers and I will use them against you’.”

McKinnon admitted to taking advantage of poor security in US systems to install covert software that gave him control of settings and access to files. Bizarrely he claims he was looking for evidence of UFOs. The US government’s claim he has cost the country hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage.

Acting for the US government Clare Montgomery QC, disputed this, saying that even if McKinnon had refused to cooperate he would have still been considered for a return to the UK. “This was very close to the type of plea bargaining that might occur here… this was not a case of ‘we [US prosecutors] can give or withhold the right to transfer [to the UK]‘” she told the Lords.

Montgomery scorned calls for Gary McKinnon to face trial in the UK, saying: “He must have appreciated as he hacked into American computers that he was committing an act that would have had repercussions in America.”

The general consensus among the McKinnon’s team was that the case is poised on a knife-edge., but they remained upbeat

?Defeat would be a major blow, but McKinnon’s team said outside the hearing that it would be by no means the last stand. The precedent set by the European Court of Human Rights in the Babar Ahmad case makes a challenge there likely?, said solicitor Karen Todner.

In a move that is likely to get moral America up-in-arms, US airports are having security scanners that visually remove clothes as the traveller walks through installed.

The airports involved are Washington, New York and Los Angeles along with a few other major cities. Passengers will be selected at random and placed in glass booths while a three-dimensional image is made of their body beneath their clothes.

The booths close around the passenger and emit millimetre waves that go through cloth to identify metal, plastics, ceramics, chemical materials and explosives, according to the transport authority.

The reason that job applications to be an airport security guard will sky rocket is because the image created is so detailed, you will be able to se every bit and bob you?ve got?ehem?packed.

?People have no idea how graphic the images are,? Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, said.

Don?t worry though, to protect passengers modesty (somewhat) when they are in the booth, their face will be blurred out.

Also, to stop over excited security officers from storing images and taking them home, the system does not save the pictures.

A TSA spokesman said: ?Once the transportation security officer has viewed the image and resolved anomalies, the image is erased from the screen permanently. The officer is unable to print, export, store or transmit the image.?

You can almost hear hackers cracking their fingers and warming up around the world.

The scan set is to replace the physical pat-downs currently widespread in airports but Lara Uselding, a TSA spokeswoman, said passengers were not obliged to accept the new machines.

“The passengers can choose between the body imaging and the pat-down,” she said.

The generally liberated Dutch have embraced the new technology though; Amsterdam’s Schipol airport has already started using the scanners.

Our day was cheered up some what with the news that benefit cheats are going to be put through lie detector tests in fifteen of the UK?s councils. The fraudsters get away with up to ?400 million of taxpayers money a year.

?The system, which analyses speech patterns to catch the culprits, has already been trialed by seven councils and has already saved them hundreds of thousands of pounds.

?Critics say that genuine claimants may be put off applying for help for fear of being wrongly labeled a fraudster but surely if you have nothing to hide, what?s the problem?

?The equipment detects changes in the sound of the claimant?s voice which could indicate they are not telling the truth about their circumstances. Staff can then able for further evidence to support any suspicious claims.

?Harrow Council has been using the technology for a year and has saved ?420,000 partly because a third of the people had received a phone call quizzing them about there need for benefits.

?More than 90% of people claiming benefits were honest, but “often people changed their stories part way through the conversation” said Harrow councilor Paul Osborne. He reckoned that some of the claimants realized their answers didn?t add up and chickened out for fear of being prosecuted for fraud.

The system seems very simple; an operator sits in front of a computer, and makes phone calls to claimants. He or she asks set questions, and the screen flashes red if the software detects a change in the modulation of the voice which could indicate the claimant is not telling the truth.

?The lie detectors will be rolled out nationally, with the government claiming they should save the taxpayers millions of pounds a year with no mention of how much the scheme costs….

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While the UK has long been able to depend upon a massive flow of oil and gas from the North Sea, it seems that over the last 20 years we have sold off the ?family silverware?. Slowly but surely the UK utility market has become dominated by overseas companies with the French ruling our water companies and the Germans and Americans our electricity supply ? even many of our oil reserves are now controlled by overseas companies. Is this a big mistake?

When you take a look at the current trend in the energy markets it seems that successive governments may have made mistakes by not protecting our very own utility companies and we are now being made to pay the price. But can we really complain if we boast about the open market policy which has been present in the UK for many years?

While we cannot really complain about the US companies who have ?raided? our markets, as we have done similar to their markets, the German and French situation is very much different. The French and German utility and energy companies are protected by law and overseas ownership is not allowed resulting in what many see as a very unfair situation. Our utility companies are affectively being bought up by state funded companies from markets in which we cannot easily operate.

To make matters worse the current trend of rising energy and utility costs is having a major impact upon the UK economy and while many struggle the foreign owned utility companies seem to be announcing higher and higher profits. But what can be done about the current situation?

The utility sector is supposed to be heavily regulated in order to avoid companies profiting at the expense of their customers (or at least to avoid substantial price increases). Whether this current regulatory regime is working is debatable, but there is no doubting that we never see our charges come down as quickly as they go up!