The La Jolla, California-based company BUMP launched earlier this week with an eponymous web service that uses license plates as a means to connect with drivers around you. As reported by Technology Review and Popular Science, users can "claim" their license plates and receive messages sent to them by other drivers.

Petermann's Progress

The huge ice island which calved from Petermann Glacier on August 4th was stuck in the mouth of Petermann Fjord for quite some time.  As I had suggested, it did not get into Nares Strait as a single ice island.  It broke into two main parts: Petermann 2010-A and Petermann 2010-B


Petermann Ice Island 2010-B

We accept that genetics make some people smarter though few consider instead that genes may be making us dumber, but deleting the RGS14 gene in mice did make them smarter - by unlocking a mysterious region of the brain considered to be relatively inflexible, scientists at Emory University School of Medicine have found.

Bring on the psychic fans!

The spread of mass panic through Short Message Service (SMS) and text on phones and services like Twitter is unnecessary and people need to learn to look at information with a more critical eye.   People in general are too quick to pass on information without checking - especially if they want to believe what it says - and propagating dubious or false information can have devastating results. 

Mass-panic through technology is not a new phenomenon - in 1938 the first segment of HG Wells' "War of the Worlds" was aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) radio network and as the first episode was done as a simulated news bulletin, many listeners who came on late thought that an actual Martian invasion was taking place.