ICANN CEO Stuart Lynn today released a plan for a “strong” ICANN that would have 5 of 15 Board members selected directly by governments and the rest by registrars, registries, plus a few Board-squatter-like ringers chosen by the ICANN Board or staff. The main justifications offered for this shift are that in order to be “strong” ICANN needs more money, more support, and less “process”. Of course, promises Lynn, ICANN’s “core values of openness and broad participation” should be “preserved”. Oh yes, ICANN wants a much bigger budget, and to be independent of the US Dept. of Commerce, and to get direct control of the root server operators too, all so as to ensure that ICANN has unimpeded ability to execute its “mission”. ICANN was supposed to save the Internet from governments; now it looks like they’re trying to become one.
Continue reading… “ICANN – An Attempt to Become Its Own Global Government”

The North Face had an unexpected hit during the holiday season — a battery-powered fleece jacket, called the Met5, with tiny fibers woven into cloth panels on either side of the front zipper. Wired to two 4-ounce lithium-ion batteries, the fibers can heat the panels to a toasty 114 degrees Fahrenheit for as long as two and a half hours.
Continue reading… “Space-Age Electric Parka”

News24 reports, “Huge amounts of water – enough to cause catastrophic floods – gushed out of fissures onto the surface of Mars relatively recently, scientists who analysed photographs of the red planet said on Wednesday.

The deluge washed the equivalent of one and a quarter times the water found in Lake Erie onto the surface of the planet near its equator, carving out a series of tear-shaped mesas.”

Continue reading… “Water on Mars?”

A professor at CalTech in Pasadena, Calif., 37-year-old Kaushik Bhattacharya is one of the most promising young theoreticians in the field of smart materials. These substances hold significant promise for everything from creating smaller and more efficient optical switches to building highways that can report when their surface needs repair.

By going all the way down to atomic levels, scientists are learning to make hybrid “active” substances with a host of unique abilities
Continue reading… “The Future of Smart Materials”